The Valley Primary School is situated in the rural area of Durbanville. It accommodates children from Grade R up to Grade 7. The children come from households that face great economic challenges. Approximately 50% of the children stay on surrounding wine farms where their parents are employed as seasonal workers from September to March. The other 50% of the children are transported by bus by the WCED from Morningside in Durbanville as well as from informal settlements in Fisantekraal (just outside Durbanville ) and Du Noon. There is a yearly intake of approximately 200 children. There are 7 teachers fully employed at the school.
The children are exposed to various social challenges such as poverty, alcohol and drug abuse and crime and very often come from households where a single parent tries to make ends meet on a state grant. There are approximately 30 volunteers assisting with various aspects of the children’s lives. These are not only restricted to school activities such as library services, physical exercises, reading support, mathematics support and literacy development, but include professionals such as an audiologist, doctor, optometrist, etc. There are currently 180 out of the 200 learners that receive daily meals at the school, which is made possible by the Peninsula School Feeding Association’s food scheme to schools. They deliver the basic food ingredients once a week to the school, which ingredients must then be cooked and prepared by the school personnel. That translates to approximately 1800 meals a week.
This is where Western Province Nomads are looking to assist the Valley School. The kitchen that the meals are prepared in was totally inadequate for the amount of meals that the team needed to prepare weekly. The size of the kitchen was approximately 2.5m x 4m. All the children’s eating utensils, the kitchen utensils and other kitchen equipment and washing facilities needed to be accommodated in this space, which leeft very little working space. There was no space for storing the food, which out of necessity previously stored in the adjacent computer room. Which further impacted on the education that can be provided.
The school’s wish was to extend the kitchen so that there would be adequate working space, and all the food could be stored in the kitchen, and that the computer room could be used for the purpose that it was intended for … and Western Province Nomds made that dream a reality. Watch the video below of the completed works, which went beyond the original remit.
