After several weeks of planning and preparing, Bailey and I finally met with the teen girls at Timbutini! We are going to begin meeting with these girls every week to work on a craft project that will help them to raise money for their school fees. In my opinion, everything went really well. Titi met with us to translate and help to lead the project. Thirteen girls from the community showed up eager to participate. Their ages ranged from 13-18, although most of the girls were closer to 13. We spent the first portion of our time together with introductions, a quick get to know you game, and guidelines for the project. Promises here are taken very seriously and so we wanted to make everything as clear as possible so that there were no expectations that we couldn't fulfill.
For this project we have decided to sew headbands. This will be fairly easy but everything will be done by hand so we had to make it very clear that everything needs to be done well. We decided that to begin, all of the sewing will be done together when we met every Saturday. Every girl will have an opportunity to sew the same amount of headbands but they must show up every week. The girls will receive two rand (about 25 cents) up front for every head band that they turn in. Timbali will put the rest of the money aside and it will go directly to school fees. We are still figuring everything out but we figure that if each girl makes about 15 to 20 headbands then we should be able to cover the costs of school fees for the following year. At the end of the project in May the girls will give their receipts to us and we will go to the bank to pay the school fees directly, this way we will avoid any misuse of the money. We have told them that the project will end in May. If everything goes well, Julie hopes that Titi can continue the project next year. It would be great to continue to give these girls the opportunity to earn money for their school fees and it would be even better if it could be run by Titi, who is a part of their community.
One of the other AIM staff members was telling us that many of the young girls from Timbutini become pregnant at a very young age. Everyone is excited about this project and hopes that in addition to helping with school fees that it will encourage a healthy support system among these girls. AIM has some curriculum that focuses on teaching about HIV/AIDS and more importantly showing young girls that they have value and worth. Bailey and I have started to look over this curriculum and we hope to incorporate part of it into the time that we share with these incredible young women.
I am really excited about this project and for this opportunity to build relationships with these young girls. I am also excited that from these headbands we are giving girls the opportunity to make sure that they can continue their education. We hope to sell some of the headbands to the teams that travel to Swaziland. Bailey and I will also be bringing some of the headbands back to the states to sell. So, that means that you will get an opportunity to support these girls and their education. Get ready to shop and help us turn headbands into school fees!
No comments:
Post a Comment