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Community Education
Due to the nature of our business Alan Tours regularly comes into contact with the various communities in the Townships and other rural environments. Here there is a special emphasis on the schools in and around Port Elizabeth and in the Nelson Mandela Bay Mertopolitan area.
Many of our guests are particularly interested in seeing the quality or lack of the educational facilities available to especially the poorer communities in the Metro. In line with a need to experience a part of the life of the communities Alan Tours will guide guests to a number of local schools in the townships in the Metro.
Elukholweni Primary School.
This is a school that was established on farm land on the western outskirts of Port Elizabeth. When I first visited the school early in 2008 with Jeremy and Jo Stattersfield with son Ned from Dover in England, they came away with what is best described as shock at the conditions that the twenty six pupils of all ages were subject to.
Without saying a word and about a year later I again was contacted by the family. Ned and friends had raised in excess of R3500.00 from selling cakes and holding raffles in the street. A further R8 500.00 was raised by the family and a total of R12 000.00 transferred to me where we contracted an local builder to upgrade their disfunctional toilets and other facilities. Facilities that in 2009 now had to cater for almost four times the number of learners as in 2008 at 110 pupils.
Further to this Jeremy and family put together a huge parcel and at great trouble and frustration sent this parcel with a lap top commputer over for the school to make use of. Two full teams of football jerseys and a football with pump were included after young Ned was so taken a back at the sight of the pupils playing football with a rolled up ball of plastic bags as a ball.
The Happiness on the faces of the youngsters should have been seen to be believed when out came first of all the jerseys then the brand new football.
Well done Jeremy, Jo and Ned for a wonderful gift you have given the school children of Elukholweni they will never forget you.
Another community project that Alan Tours has become involved with is an organisation called Masifunde. Learning 4 you. An organization based in Germany that attracts volunteers from around the world to come out to help the poor and under-privilaged learners, primarily in the townships where these learners are exposed to learning projects to help nuture life and learning skills and thereby improving their ability to qualify themselves for a more productive life.
We assist with nature based projects such as beach and township clean-ups. Game drives to introduce the kids to the attractions of the natural world, a world most of them know so very little about. We introduce them to the concept of a clean environment and why it is important to keep it clean. We look at the huge wealth of plants that their very own ancestors used to keep their ancient clans healthy and free of disease.
The children who show the most enthusiasm in the projects are rewarded when we take them on game drives or further afield to one of the Big 5 reserves that occur on the outskirts of Port Elizabeth.
The competion to be chosen is impressive and some of the kids just keep on an on coming back for more which is exactly what the project is all about.
To us it is amazing to see the awakening, the realisation that there is just so much more out there than just the bush, that it is an intricate and involved system in sync with itself much as we should be with our envirnoment.
Please don’t be shy in making contact if you would like to contribute in time or money to any one of the projects that we are affiliated to. They are brilliant and especially the schools are always in need of some assistance.
Please contact Alan on the details supplied should you wish to learn more.
