Month: June 2019

International Day of the African Child is celebrated around the globe on 16 June each year in order to raise awareness around the ongoing need for government, institutions and NGOs to act on issues affecting vulnerable children across the African continent; most importantly, the improvement of education and the full realisation of the rights of African children. Every year a new theme is proposed, designed to highlight different aspects of the problems experienced by Africa’s youth, with 2019s focus being ‘Humanitarian Action in Africa: Children’s Rights First’. For the global non-profit organisation, Afrika Tikkun, South Africa’s youth aged seven to thirty five are at the core of their efforts.

Onyi Nwaneri, Group Executive of Strategic Partnerships and Marketing at Afrika Tikkun says, “The developmental work of our Cradle to Career 360˚ model is essentially geared towards enhancing the wellbeing, empowerment and protection of the youth of today. Of critical importance to us is that the voices of the most vulnerable are heard and, naturally, upholding the rights of children plays a crucial role. Our core belief is that every young person has the potential to change the world”.

Afrika Tikkuns Early Childhood Development (ECD) centres offer age appropriate care for those aged two to six, and a curriculum that produces school ready children. This age group has been identified as an extremely important time for growth across all areas of development.

The Child and Youth Development (CYD) Programme works holistically with young people aged seven to eighteen towards facilitating their emotional, intellectual, physical, mental and social development. The programme provides learning and homework support, life skills, sports, arts and culture activities, as well as interventions tailored for the specific outcomes of a higher matric pass rate, positive life choices, taking responsibility for their own lives and further learning opportunities.

The Career Development Programme (CDP) provides career guidance, job readiness training, job placement and bursaries for further learning; targeted at young adults between nineteen and thirty-five years of age. The key outcome is economically empowering young people and breaking the cycle of poverty. These young people should be able to navigate the job market and access opportunities for sustainable employment or self-employment.

In addition, Afrika Tikkun offers an Alumni Programme that aims to secure new ways of curbing youth unemployment as well as outreach and support services to children of all ages with programmes such as Nutrition and Food Security, Health Care, Gender Based Violence (GBV) and Child Abuse, Family Support and an Empowerment Programme for Children and Families Living with Disabilities.

“Together with like-minded supporters we are passionate about developing young people from cradle to career. Throughout all our programmes we aim to shape economically empowered youth so that they, in turn, can contribute to the successful building of our nation”, remarks Nwaneri.

Youth empowerment is a prevailing tool in combatting poverty, crime, violence and poor governance. Empowerment guides youth toward developing a wholesome outlook on life and encourages personal development of the individual. This process starts in early childhood and becomes even more important as young people mature.

Nwaneri concludes, “In South Africa we celebrate International Day of the African Child on the same day as Youth Day because they are so integrated. It is a very auspicious day for us because it speaks directly to our objectives as an organisation”.

For more information on Afrika Tikkun and their initiatives call 011 325 5914, email info@afrikatikkun.org or visit www.afrikatikkun.org.

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Annual Alumni Day encourages SA youth to join the conversation

Afrika Tikkun alumni gathered in great numbers at the Metropolitan Building in Braamfontein on Saturday, 15 June to celebrate Youth Month and participate in a discussion around the importance of preparing for the unprecedented age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

CEO of Afrika Tikkun, Marc Lubner opened the event with inspirational words urging young people to participate in debates and discussions such as these in order to join the conversation and discover the greater opportunities that await them as the next generation of South African leaders.

More than 600 young people from Diepsloot, Hillbrow, Orange Farm and Alexandra attended Afrika Tikkun’s Annual Alumni Day, whilst representatives of African Bank and Afrika Tikkun, as well as SA celebrity Sibongakonke KK Fumba sat on the panel.

Annual Alumni Day is a marked occasion on the Afrika Tikkun calendar as the organisation celebrates the significance of Youth Day, commemorates the actions of the young people that gave hope to South Africa, and provides opportunities and platforms for young people to engage on youth development, employment and entrepreneurial opportunities.

As Afrika Tikkun celebrates its 25^th anniversary this year, alumni also shared their success stories under the theme ‘We are Afrika Tikkun Legacy’.

Onyi Nwaneri, Group Executive of Strategic Partnerships and Marketing at Afrika Tikkun commented, “Afrika Tikkun’s Annual Alumni Day provides the perfect opportunity for young people to engage, network and interact with exhibitors, panelists and guests on the future of youth development and employment in the country; sorely needed in these times. For this, we would like to thank all our partners involved in making the day such a success and we look forward to furthering those partnerships in order to make a real difference in the lives of our young people”.

The next Annual Alumni Day is set to take place in Mfuleni on XX, where over 150 young people who are part of the Afrika Tikkun Alumni Programme are expected to attend and engage on the same topic of discussion. Guests and panelists will include representatives of local colleges, corporate companies and government entities who will provide insights and career guidance to alumni members.

The Afrika Tikkun Alumni Programme was introduced in 2018 as the fifth arm of Afrika Tikkun’s holistic Cradle to Career 360º model, intended to further their objective of empowering South African youth and securing new ways of curbing youth unemployment.”

For more information on Afrika Tikkun and their initiatives call 011 325 5914, email info@afrikatikkun.org or visit www.afrikatikkun.org.

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“Focus!
Are lunch breaks for wimps, or do they make us more productive? It is true that you can improve office performance simply by relocating the kettle or coffee machine? And what are Monk Mode Mornings and Hack Weeks? These and many more questions are investigated by Bruce Daisley in his new book, The Joy of Work. As a taster, we have this extract in which he looks at the benefits of focusing on one thing at the time.

Let’s address that thought that you’ve been having – the one you only ever dare mention to yourself as a half-formed notion or to friends when drunk. You have a strong suspicion that you’d be happier doing something else, don’t you? Perhaps you could travel the world. Possibly you’d enjoy being farmer – an organic farmer, perhaps, growing courgettes or purple-sprouting broccoli. Our relationship with work has always been complicated. If we don’t have a job, we’re unhappy. Yet when we do have a job, we invariably rate work as our least favourite activity. We also say that the single thing we most dislike at work is being with our bosses. No wonder that running away to grow courgettes seems so attractive. Survey statistics certainly aren’t encouraging on this front. Office workers asked to evaluate their lives out of 10 tend to give it around six. When researchers used a smartphone app to record over a million observations from tens of thousands of individuals in the UK, they found that being at work scored the second lowest happiness score. Only ‘being ill in bed’ was regarded as being worse. Commuting was also regarded as a thoroughly unenjoyable activity. It’s worth noting, though, that if being an office worker gets you to only a six, being a farm worker scores even lower: 4.5.Even if you have a nice porch to sit on at nights with your lovely little dog, Rex, for company, you’d probably still only achieve 5.5. Courgette growing, then, is probably not the answer.

What is?
It’s been known for some time that money doesn’t lead to happiness – or, at least, that while a certain amount of money is key to a sense of security and wellbeing, it doesn’t follow that the more you have, the happier you become. The inversion of that equation is probably less familiar to people, though. Researchers Andrew Oswald and Jan-Emmanuel De Neve looked at the comparative performance of siblings to see whether happier teenagers went on to perform better financially in adulthood. They found that young people who reported being more content with their lives went on to earn significantly more money later in their lives. How much more? Using accepted measures of trying to calibrate happiness into a score, their data suggests that for every 1% more life satisfaction that individuals showed at the age of 22, they earned $2 000 more at the age of 29. (Of course, this is not the case with that tiny number of jobs that involve high pay and huge stress – such as investment banking).

However, if you are able to achieve happiness at work, not only are you likely to end up earning more, but you’re also more likely to stay in work. Scientists call this ‘reverse causality’. In essence the relationship runs both ways. A win-win (or lose-lose) style situation. At the same time, researchers at Warwick University have found that the productivity of happy workers is likely to increase by 12%. Any unhappy employees, on the other hand, are shown to experience a 10% reduction – meaning a 22% total difference in output from their contented colleagues.

So, how do you make yourself happier at work? Well, in this book, I outline a variety of ways to recharge such as taking a break from email to getting a better night sleep. And while they are effective for variety of reasons, they are also important because the greater focus they give you is in itself a source of greater happiness. Time and time again, scientists have found that constant distraction is a sure path to a sense of discontent. Psychologists at Harvard University, using another smartphone prompt to check on what people at work were thinking and doing, discovered that for 46.9% of the day they weren’t thinking about very much. They were in a fug or blurry mind-wandering. And while mind-wandering can take you down pleasant paths, it seems to be one’s darker thoughts that stick: those in the survey who were particularly prone to self-distraction were 17.7% less happy than their more focused colleagues. As the researchers put it: “A wandering mind is an unhappy mind”.

If you want to be happier in your job, then, doing one thing at a time is a route to happiness as well as productivity. There are times when we need to be unstressed and expansive in our thinking – when we need divergent ideas coming to us. But no idea is of any value unless we have the undistracted concentration to bring it to life. In an age when many of us have dozens of Internet tabs open in our browsers, when we can quickly skip from one activity to another to try to make progress, It can feel that haste means getting more done. In fact, the opposite is true: your mind will most readily serve you with creative thoughts if you’ve completed more of the jobs expected from you. And to get this done you need to focus. “

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Proper hand hygiene protects children from tummy bugs and Diarrhea.

On the 8^th of May, Sister Pamela (Mfuleni’s health wellness nurse) held a three day hand hygiene awareness session with the ECD learners. The aim of this session was to educate the young ones on how to wash their hands thoroughly, get rid of germs and ultimately avoid getting Diarrhea.

According to Bettercare- South Africa’s leading self-managed learning program, Diarrhea is the most common disease in childhood all over the world. “Why is Diarrhea most common specifically amongst children?” you may ask. One of the simplest answers to this question, is that many children practice poor hand hygiene.  Not taking proper handwashing precautions may put children at risk of being infected with Diarrhea or a viral tummy bug.

With the engagement of Physical Health Care staff members and teachers, the willing to learn children actively took part in the process of washing their hands. The ECD learners were presented with steps on how to properly cleanse their hands:

Figure 2: ECD learner washing his hands with wellness nurse

Step 1- Apply soap to your hands- using liquid hand wash as a detergent is a better option than a bar of soap.

Step 2- Ensure that the soap is spread well on both hands and in-between all fingers.

Step 3- Wash your hands thoroughly with clean water.

Step 4- Rinse the soap off until there is none left and the running water is clean.

Step 5- Shake your hands off until they are half or completely dry.

Children should not use a towel to dry their hands after washing them because after people finish using in the restroom, they make use of the towel to dry their hands. This means that the likelihood of the towel being infected with germs is very high- which then defeats the purpose of washing their hands in the first place.

Parents, in order to prevent your child from getting a tummy bug and being infected with Diarrhea, please ensure that they wash their hands often. They should wash their hands before they eat, after relieving themselves and after playing with fellow learners and friends.

A couple of hand washes a day keeps the Diarrhea away!

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The Youth Parliament is an inequality awareness programme that aims in enabling the young people to express themselves when they feel that their rights are not being taken into consideration. The programme does this by giving them a weekly platform at the centre to raise their concerns such as human rights, service delivery and other socio-economic issues to the people in power within our communities. The Youth Parliament programme is also a movement that will aid in building advocacy and a rights awareness mindset amongst the youth – specifically women.

ABOUT THE TOUR

V&A Waterfront was the starting point of the tour- one of Cape Town’s most beautiful tourist attractions. Students were exposed to big corporate buildings, nature reserves, sports car dealerships and very classy restaurants on their way to the second stop- Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens.

In a short interview that was conducted with, Sihle Makili (18) who is now part of the Alumni programme, said that “youth living in townships are not exposed to the different parts of Cape Town because we are not outgoing and do not explore Cape Town enough. We are unaware of how well people live on this side as compared to Mfuleni.”

Sihle’s statement is evidence that the purpose of the tour (which was for them to experience the differences in the standard of living in Cape Town) has manifested. He was able to clearly identify that the standard of living for those in townships and those in suburbs, such as Kirstenbosch, are totally dissimilar.

Nontsikelelo Booi (20) expressed that the apartheid era caused a lot of economic inequality not only in Cape Town but in South Africa as a whole. She added, “The Youth Parliament will empower me to help bring a change in our communities, it will enable us, as the youth, to voice out our concerns of service delivery in our township as compared to the suburbs.”

Indiphile Sitomela (21) said that “what stood out for me, was experiencing a different type of ‘fun’ apart from what many would associate with drinking and partying. I had fun while learning about the history of Cape Town and seeing the segregation still existing in some areas, I got educated.”

The Youth Parliament tour aided in the young people recognizing their human rights as South African citizens and thus enabled them to speak up and practice self-advocacy. It also has the potential to lure in many young people and have them express their political views in a controlled manner. The Youth Parliament will enable the young people to become active citizens and work together in trying to add value into our communities.

Having successful and educational excursions such as the bus tour, helps youth stay away from crime related issues such as drug abuse, robbery and alcohol abuse. As much as the tour was an educational one, the students had a lot of fun!

With that being said, the day ended on a lighter note when they saw, touched and took ‘selfies’ with a seal that swam to the shore of the waters at Hout Bay Beach.

When driving by Imizamo Yethu (Our Efforts), an informal settlement on the outskirts of Houtbay, opinions were expressed about how it differed from Houtbay itself. The youth questioned the manner in which Imizamo Yethu was separated from the suburbs by merely a road.

The students met the Kaapse Klopse at Hout Bay Harbor and had an opportunity to dance, sing and laugh with the colorful group. It was an amazing and successful excursion that the youth would love to be a part of in the near future again.

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