By Frerieke

Today, after my wonderful Free WI-FI Friday (the school is on holiday, so no teaching today), after my 2km swim, right there in the sauna of the gym…right there… I just got it….. I really got it…… >> I LOVE PEOPLE. Swimming is my meditation.. I don’t think, just become one with the water and enjoy.

The sauna……the sauna is the place where i start talking to my inner self, the place where i connect with my own mission/vision!

Today, the conversation went like this: “Fre, why do you do what you do? Why love to the world? Why transformation in Africa? Why ‘making a difference’? Are you doing it because you want to be liked? Show of how good you take care of others? Be ‘interesting’ by being different then your friends in the Netherlands? (Haha, lucky me: today the sauna was empty so I could actually say those words out loud..)

And you know what…as much as I wanted to scream: NO I don’t do this work for me….. I actually couldn’t. To be honest… yeah I am doing it for me. I choose the life I am living here in Africa. I choose to be liked, measured by the amount of care for others or ‘the difference I make in a persons life’. (yep..rather this then being liked because of my money, or being liked because I force you to like me)

So my next question to myself was: “Aha you selfish bitch, so what do you really give and how much would you give if there wasn’t anything in it for you?” That is a freaky question. Then I remembered all the great feedback on our website from our students, how much our work matters to them…. and I wondered: the students satisfaction, is that just an extra to my own fulfillment?”And then it came to me… Fre, you love people.

I believe in the goodness of man kind, even the guy attacking me. I believe in people and i believe that each voice matters! And hell yeah…I’ll spend my entire life making sure you all feel loved! And hey… it is such a great ‘extra’ that you’ll like me for it.

The COSAT students > oh yeah do I love them! Creative, eagerness to learn, care for each other and community, the stand in life they take…. To be really honest with you? Nelson Mandela will have some great competition!

The dance of life is magical…

… Talking about dancing….. Please enjoy this video that one of the students made! South African dance!

” Peace Tiles is a growing network of people using the arts to inspire social change. Peace Tiles are being used to brighten the spotlight on issues, raise funds to support causes, and inspire hope in communities around the world, .. ” http://peacetiles.mixedmedia.us/

By Frerieke van Bree

Ingredients:

50 bright COSAT students, 50 beautiful visions of what matters to them, lots of paint, scissors, magazines,..

Additional tools:

Heat! (oeh what a cold day and room), Anasuya and Fre for the explanations and fun, photo camera’s, …and whatever the students brought with them (from sand, to beats, to leaves, to fabric) and lots of plastic bags to keep the mess out of this examination hall.

The results?

50 very creative and diverse Peace Tiles! 50 very enlightened students! and…. a mess …haha of course

What else?

After the session we put all the Tiles together and asked the students which two tiles would represent them (=all students) best. That was such a fun exercise. It really made them feel as “being one”. Everybody was very energetic when they finally agreed on the two. After their decision we announced that those chosen two tiles will be presented at the school assembly next week. Exciting.

And now?

Next is to create a mural with the tiles, preferable somewhere in the community, to spread their inspiring messages not only here, online, but also directly to the people the students care about.

That was fun!

Please keep on posting your comments to the students here on the site. They check in  here quite often and really appreciate your words!

By Lwazi Dyantyi

What matters to me is my friends and me.

The reason why I say that my life matters to me is that I have been and still going through a lot of painful things alone. When my mother passed away I was lost because she was my guider and adviser. My father is a Junkie and he don’t care about me and he says that I must be “INDEPENDENT” to him. That’s very painful to be told by the only parent you are left with. I know that good and bad times come and go so it’s part of life. Now I have to make and take positive things and choices of my life. I love myself no matter what the situation is I am only me NOBODY ELSE.

Many of my friends are fortunate than me they still have both of their parents. They are given everything that they want at any time than me. I once had o low self esteem because of the situation I was facing. I advice them to LOVE,CARE&RESPECT them while they still have them both. I have seen that most of the youngster get LOST and start to be CORRUPT when one or both of their parents died. I don’t want my friends to be like that when that time comes in their lives. I try by all means to make or prepare them that PATH when that time came. I love my friends very much and I care for them.

Yes in life there are GOOD and BAD times but I am glad that that time came when I loved GOD because he is my savior. I love myself no matter what the situation is because they are making me to be a STRONG and BRAVE man in my future. I LOVE MYSELF VERY MUCH THANK YOU.

NOTE BY Fre: for more pictures that the students have taken, please visit our gallery

By Frerieke van Bree

Nwabisa Dyonashe is a 15 year old South African girl who lives in Township Khayelitsha near Cape Town. She is a 10th grade student of COSAT (Center of science and Technology). She is one of our inspiring students of the art and leadership initiative that Anasuya and I started at the school.

What inspires me so much about these students is their willingness to learn, to make a difference, to be great. The difficulties that a lot of them have to face on a day to day base are enormous. The responsibilities those 15 year olds have to take, go way beyond what I could have imagined when i was 15. Yes my teenage years were not always the greatest, but i start appreciating all opportunities i had more an more by seeing those students here in Khayelitsha apreciate what they have got.

Enjoy this short, but very powerful text of Nwabisa, together with the pictures she took of her house and family:

By Nwabisa Dyonashe

I live with my grandmother with my brother and sister. She is a pensioner so she doesn’t have enough money for buying everything in the house. So I have committed myself to working in a salon every Saturday and Sunday to help her. I help her by buying things that are finished and buy things that are needed in school and maybe a pair of shoes for either my brother or sister. Doing this for my family really matters to me. I don’t feel like people have neglected us. I just know it’s my life and I am living it. And I don’t expect people to feel sorry for me.

By Frerieke van Bree

Iran Masebeni is a 15 year old South African boy who lives in Township Khayelitsha near Cape Town. He is a 10th grade student of COSAT (Center of science and Technology). He is one of our inspiring students of the art and leadership initiative that Anasuya and I started at the school.

With this Love to the World initiative we really want to create a space where anybody can make a difference and inspire others to do so. This site is not about us ( Anasuya and me), but is an invitation for anybody to get involved.

Last week we had a great visitor, Raquel (from New York) who was so inspired back home after seeing the videos of the COSAT students online.. she wanted to get to know those students and offer some of her leadership skills. Leadership through dance. She also gave the students the assignment to write down what really matters to them and have them present this in front of their fellow students. Raquel, you were great, please share your own story with us!

Iran’s story will be the first one that we’ll share with you. The text goes together with the photographs that Iran took of his house. (one of the components that i use in my classes is photography. 6 camera’s go round. Each student gets an opportunity to show the class what matters to them in pictures.)

Please be inspired by this young mans passions:

By Iran Masebeni

What matters to me is the fact that I want South Africa to change for the good. I want blacks to be equal to whites to have same standards of living, no blacks or whites in the street. I lost both my parents when I was so young. This matters to me because I am a black person, a young South African that is growing up. Every day I think how is South Africa going to be in the future, who  is leading. Is it going to be the whites again who are leading our country? If so, why did our ancestors then fight for us, why did they waste their time, ruined their lives, fought till dead. Did they fight so that we will stay in shadows under fear, live in the streets?

I want us black people to be the leaders of tomorrow. I want us to live where ever we choose, drive whatever car we choose to drive. I don’t want us to be like whites lets do our thing. Let’s dance to our rhythm.

I want us to be us. Live up to our ancestors. Why i say this is because if it is raining, we don’t sleep because our houses are flooded.

I say if living in the shacks is the style of South Africa, the SO BE IT , amen. Let us all live in shacks, blacks and whites.

So what I am saying is that i want Equality

I want us to live in an extraordinary country.

The Art and Leadership Academy is providing the fundamentals of leadership to previously (and in most instances, still) disadvantaged youth from across the Cape Flats. The Academy excavates the repressed and undiscovered self-love and pride in being South African in COSAT students as a vehicle of empowerment.

The students learn public speaking, debate, critical analysis, and team-building to identify social problems that are negatively impacting them in their community. Through the integration of the arts: creative writing, theater, music, photography and film, the students analyze alternative and effective ways of expressing emotions and protest while learning from the Masters.

In direct response to the resignation regarding the ongoing social problems in their community, the students then create viable and sustainable solutions through their development of community projects that they will learn how to manage. These projects will involve members of their community who will work in partnership with the students. This awakened and empowered love for their community is the driving force for them becoming the powerful and well-trained leaders of the country in a few years time, as they will have a first-hand experience of making the difference that matters.

The Arts & Leadership Academy was a big hit in it’s limited run with a select group of 11th and 12 th graders from COSAT earlier this year. Love To The World is thrilled to be providing this training and development to the entire 10th grade of COSAT High School.

By Frerieke van Bree

20.000 women marched on the 9th of Aug 1956 towards the Union Buildings in Pretoria to protest against the pass laws (special identification documents which curtailed an African’s freedom of movement during the Apartheid era.)
that proposed further restrictions on the movements of women.

Those brave women risked to be arrested, detentioned or banned. They demonstrated courage and strength and proved that they could organise themselves, that they were not powerless, that the commonly accepted stereotype of women (tied to the home and not politically mature) was outdated and inaccurate.

Wathint’Abafazi Wathint’imbokodo! (Now you have touched the women, you have struck a rock.) was what the women were singing during their march. The latest incarnation of their song: ‘Strike a woman, strike a rock’ has come to represent women’s courage and strength.

The 1956 March helped to shape the ideologies of many, particular those that drafted the South African Constitution and the Commission of Gender and Equality. August 9th is now celebrated as Women’s Day in South Africa.

Women are driving forces in the transformation of South Africa. Within the black community for example they are the ones that 1. Stand for their family, 2. Work, 3. Do all the cooking, housekeeping. Cape Town’s mayor (and national opposition leader), Helen Zille is a perfect example of a woman with courage and power.

Personally, through my profession (building industry) and experience of working both here in South Africa and in The Netherlands, I can conclude that traditional role-plays (women at home, men in power) are still much more accurate here in South Africa compared to Europe. ..That is one of the reasons why I would like to give extra credits to Helen Zille and all those other great female activists here in South Africa!

The attached photograph shows two beautiful young South African women. One being from the Xhosa culture the other from the Coloured Community.

 

By Peter Deitz

After nearly three months living in Cape Town, South Africa, the last thing I would have expected to see was a bus full of white South African school children pulling into the parking lot of an elementary and middle school serving mostly Xhosa, Zulu, and Tswana children.  But low and behold, a week prior to my departure, I had the chance to witness just that only a few minutes from the nation’s capital city of Pretoria. 

For the last two years, The Centurus Colleges Trust has maintained “outreach programs” at each of their three Christian private schools. With the exception of a handful of bursary students, the colleges enroll children from upper-middle class South African families. Most of the tuition-paying students are white. A few hail from the Indian and black families who have done well in post-apartheid South Africa.

After school, the vast majority of students return to their high-security homes that include virtually every amenity a child would need for a healthy and fun upbringing: a functioning family unit, plenty of toys, a desk at which to do their homework, a quiet place to sleep, ample food in the kitchen, and often an outdoor swimming pool. But there is also something missing from the picture, something essential for raising well-balanced and civic-minded children. A good dose of reality. 

If it weren’t for the “outreach programs” at the Centurus Colleges, the students would have virtually no meaningful contact with the country’s majority population, which confronts daily the trauma of AIDS/HIV, the struggle of finding work and making ends meet, and persistent discrimination on the basis of skin color.  Hence, the reason for the school visit Fre and I had the privilege to attend in late February 2008.

After the kids disembarked from the bus, they were met with smiles and commotion as more than two hundred school children poured into the courtyard where the visitors would be received, each carrying a chair on which to sit.  Through a series of culture sharing events, the two groups of South African youth had a rare chance to rub shoulders and learn from one another.

The first day of the school trip was designed for grade 5 & 6 students.  They were led into a large courtyard.  The thirty-five students from Tygervalley College sat together near the back of the seating area.  The grade 5 students performed a waltz in their Centurus school uniforms to introduce their hosts to the traditional culture of white South Africa.  This quiet affair was followed by three lively African dance ensembles, performed by students at the host school.  They wore traditional Xhosa, Zulu, and Tswana attire, appropriate to each of the three dance performances. 

Later in the day, the grade 5 & 6 students from both schools were introduced to one another and asked to find pen pals with whom to correspond.   The pen pal pairings fell along expected gender lines.  The girls were quick to introduce themselves to one another and pair off.  The boys from both schools required a bit more cajoling on the part of teachers to get the conversations started. 

On the second day, grade 7 & 8 student from Tygervalley College arrived with gift baskets for grade 1 students at the host school.  The decorated goody bags included candy, snacks, and a drink.  After distributing the goody bags, the grade 1 students sang a song for the Tygervalley College students.  The Tygervalley College students returned the favor by improvising a performance of some kind.  My mind is blanking on the details.  Later in the day, the grade 7 & 8 students took presented gifts of books and toys to the school library.   They then spent an hour reading to grade 2 students from the host school. 

It’s easy to get down about the state of South Africa.  Fifteen years since the end of apartheid, many of the systemic problems that characterized the darkest period of South Africa’s history persist.   In the meantime, AIDS/HIV has devastated families and entire communities.  South Africa’s government is failing to deliver basic services, including electricity and drinking water, to the communities that need them the most.  And yet, wealthy South Africa buzzes along as if nothing is wrong. 

The two days Fre and I spent assisting with the “outreach programs” at Centurus Colleges allowed me to focus on something very positive.   The experience reminded me that children the world over have an easy time setting aside their differences and finding common ground on which to become friends.

On February 13th and 14th, I witnessed the full beauty and diversity of South Africa’s founding peoples and was given much reason to believe they could build a nonracial and socially equitable future for their country. 

A note from Fre:

It is heart warming to see those students interacting and making friends. See for yourself in the video we made! It is sad, sad, SAD to realize that this exchange, and actual meeting of black children and white children, took 15 years after Apartheid to happen. Thanks to the leaders at Centurus Colleges Trust, who have made it easy for these kids to “make friends”! Bravo! check also our photo gallery for more pics of this day…