Two new GSK volunteers join Project HOPE UK

Project HOPE UK welcomes two new volunteers from the GlaxoSmithKline PULSE corporate social responsibility programme who will be working on The Thoughtful Path: Munsieville for the next six months. Carola Michielsen will be developing our communications strategy and Alyson Krucher will be building new corporate partnerships to widen the support for The Thoughtful Path. Their work will be helping to empower the community of Munsieville to change the way it cares for its orphans and other vulnerable children forever:
Carola is from the Netherlands and has worked for GSK since 1999. She says "before coming to GSK I studied biology and did my PhD at the Veterinary Faculty in the Netherlands. In 1999 I started at the medical department of GSK as a medical advisor. In 2004 I became a brand manager and then in 2006 I started working as Head of Marketing for paediatric and travel vaccines. In September 2009 I was appointed Head of Marketing for respiratory and urology products, leading a large team of 12 people being brand managers, project managers and marketing assistants. In August 2011 I started my Pulse assignment with Project Hope UK, working for The Thoughtful Path Munsieville. This opportunity allows me to do really more for society and I am very happy to be part of the Project Hope UK organisation! I like doing and watching sports, hiking and travelling. One of my first trips to Africa was to Madagascar and since that time I have been impressed by the beauty of Africa’s nature and the colourful African people!"
Alyson has been with GlaxoSmithKline for 17 years, first as a sales representative in Southern Connecticut, USA. She says "I remained in the sales division through two mergers, and became a Sales Manager in December 2003. Currently, I am an area sales manager in the New York area. I will be working with Project Hope UK in Munsieville where my role is to partner with South African and international corporations and government officials to link their resources with those needs of the township. I am tasked with fostering confidence and the sharing of best practices within the community so that the resources from the corporations are leveraged by the Munsieville community and solutions are generated by the people themselves. I have always had a passion for helping people and this PULSE assigment is a great fit for me to immerse myself in another culture, uncover opportunities to help, and make a sustainable change in a community while at the same time fostering skill sets that will make me a more productive and valuable employee of GSK."
Check back soon for more news from Carola and Alyson as they start to make a difference in Munsieville.

Munsieville students visit Caxton Magazines

Students from The Thoughtful Path’s 'Youth Voice Journalism Academy' in Munsieville spent a day at Caxton Magazines recently at the start of their latest assignment.
The team of journalists at 'Your Family' magazine gave the students some first-hand experience in magazine editing and production, including tips on how to create a professional layout. After a day of presentations and in-depth discussions with the journalists, the students went away put their own draft magazine together.
Women's magazine, men’s magazine, Sports, Beauty, Entertainment... which title would they choose to work on and put to print? The students went back to Caxton Magazines a couple of weeks later to have their work edited, and got some really positive feedback from the Your Family team.
Well done to the students for their efforts – look forward to the next good news story from Munsieville!

Green shoots of hope in Munsieville

This week saw another community clean-up in the area of Munsieville known as 'Little Mshengoville', a collection of shacks clinging to a steep hillside. Until recently, the community rubbish dump, surrounded by the shacks in which children are living, was overflowing with stinking garbage. Not only was this unpleasant to look at and to smell, it was also a threat to the solitary water stand pipe serving the whole area, home to several hundred people. Now, thanks to the efforts of the community and the local council, the area has been cleaned up and the community will be able to enjoy a safe, clean water supply.

In another way to improve the environment and tackle hunger and poverty, The Thoughtful Path has recently shown the first group of community leaders how to build keyhole vegetable gardens. These will help to' green' up Munsieville and more importantly to provide food for children and an income for families if surplus produce can be sold locally. More training sessions are planned for the coming weeks to spread the word and provide the community with a way to feed and support themselves.

Young people of Munsieville addressed at launch of “one job per needy household” programme

The Gauteng National Youth Development Agency (Nyda) chairman, Simon Molefe, recently took young people to task at the Munsieville Sports Complex for engaging in improper activities as a way to overcome their problems. In a strongly-worded speech aimed at curtailing young people’s immoral acts, Molefe did not mince his words as he stated that young people cannot be actively involved in the National Youth Services (NYS) programme if they continue to produce babies.

Molefe was addressing young people at the launch of the “one job per needy household” programme, which is part of the Gauteng government’s effort aimed at mitigating poverty, unemployment and joblessness caused by economic depression.

He urged young people to take their education seriously and for those who are working as interns in government departments to make use of the Internet to empower themselves with necessary skills. Molefe said the Nyda will strive to make sure that young people become entrepreneurs and not “tenderpreneurs”. It is aimed at enhancing the participation of young people in the economy, through targeted and integrated programmes, among others.

Waste management plan for Gauteng launched

Gauteng province, which includes Munsieville, is an economic hub and produces 42 per cent of South Africa’s waste! Over the years, the province has experienced various challenges relating to waste management and waste volumes, hence a waste minimisation plan and standards have been developed to ensure that the waste produced in Gauteng is dealt with appropriately.
On 13 June the launch of the waste management standards, held in Munsieville in Mogale City, introduced three documents to address the following areas:
• The Gauteng Waste Minimisation Plan
• The Gauteng Hazardous Waste Management Plan
• The Gauteng Waste Collection Standards.
The 45 existing operational landfills are under pressure from waste generated in the province. Constraints include competing needs for land, as well as opposition by residents to developing disposal sites close to their residential areas. However, proper disposal sites will create job opportunities through recycling, helping to alleviate poverty. The project aims to introduce basic standards that are uniform in all Gauteng municipalities and tackle issues such as limited refuse removal services in poor areas like Munsieville, which cause health hazards.

Raising awareness of child protection in Munsieville

Candice Wallace is currently working with Project HOPE UK as part of her Masters degree studies at Brunel University, and last week she was in Munsieville to run a series of workshops for The Thoughtful Path's child protection programme.
The workshops covered children’s rights, the issues surrounding child sexual abuse and how to raise awareness of this problem in the community.
Participants included members of the Child Protection Unit from the Thoughtful Path, who are responsible for developing abuse prevention programmes for the community. Other key players were children who have been victims of child sexual abuse themselves, as well as police officers, Social Welfare officers, teachers and nurses.
Candice used presentations, interactive sessions, role playing and videos to encourage the children to talk about their experiences and to highlight the legal, psychological and community aspects of child sexual abuse.
Project HOPE UK sees these workshops as an integral part of building effective networking in the community and for developing a sustainable community response to this widespread problem.
See our Web site for more information about the Thoughtful Path programme and find out how you can support our work in Munsieville.

Dr John Howe, CEO of Project HOPE, visits Munsieville

Dr John Howe, CEO and President of Project HOPE US, visited Munsieville recently. Here is his report from his trip, where he saw the difference that Project HOPE UK's Thoughtful Path programme is already making to the lives of the children there.

"...we shall be as a city upon a hill -- the eyes of the people are upon us."

President-elect John F. Kennedy, January 8, 1961

I was reminded of these words, as we drove west from Johannesburg. My destination of Munsieville, a city of 39,000, sits high on a hill, overlooking the plains of the Rand District. The health of Munsieville is at risk both economically and medically. The nearby gold mines have shut down, resulting in 70% unemployment. 10,000 people live in corrugated tin shacks. Two clinics and two ambulances serve the entire city, without a hospital.

Yet as I visited with community elders I was most impressed with their sense of optimism. This was partly due to a sense of hope created by “The Thoughtful Path” programme, designed and carried out to "give orphans and vulnerable children the opportunity to develop into healthy, productive adults."

The project's early success is related to finding solutions from within the community to needs in early childhood development, after school care, youth support and development, community strengthening, child and youth sports programmes, child rights and protections, as well as partnership capacity building.

Betty Nkoana is the present Project Manager for the "Thoughtful Path" in Munsieville. As we visited two Early Childhood Development Centers (EDCC), one of the clinics and the homes of members of the community, the love the members have for her was clearly evident.

In the future, leadership will be passed to a younger generation, but the city will be well served, as seen in visits with two of its outstanding young people. Ivy started a successful for-profit EDCC from the bottom up, and Bucs began as a journalist intern but is now the city's lead print and electronic writer.

There are plans to create a sports centre and a community resource centre, all consistent with the goal of giving young people the "opportunity to develop into healthy, productive adults."

I left Munsieville with a new image of "a city upon a hill," a modern-day version of what President-elect Kennedy had in mind as he spoke in Boston in 1961.

See The Thoughtful Path Web site for more information on how you can get involved in supporting this innovative programme.