The Hantam Community Education Trust Lockdown report as at 6 April 2020

We do indeed find ourselves in extraordinary and stressful times. There is so much uncertainty, especially if the lockdown is extended.

How are we facing the challenges that this imposes on the work of the trust and all its beneficiaries:

The school, ECD and Effective Parenting Programme are all on lockdown. This is very worrying for us as our children are not able to work online, should the lockdown be prolonged the challenge of catching up is even greater. It is extremely challenging for many of the students to work from homes where parents are not literate. Where we are able, we have encouraged farms and older literate siblings to play a supportive role, concentrating only on Maths and English. Our library is accessible on Wednesday mornings, (when the clinic is open) books can be taken out by the parents and children. Our greatest concern is for the children who attend the Trust school from town. The reality is when schools re-open, many of the town parents will be unable to pay for their children’s transport; our fear is that these children could well drop out of school.

We are using this gap at the school to complete very necessary maintenance work on the inside and outside of the school buildings. The three builders live on the Osler farm.

The Trust Clinic is open on a Wednesday. This allows for all adults and children to be treated and medicated if ill. All the farmers have ordered digital thermometers and will take temperatures of farm workers and their families twice a day. There is a Hantam Covid–19 WhatsApp group with the Hantam farmers, clinic sisters and our local doctor. We have appointed a dedicated farmer’s wife to manage slot visitation time for each farm on the clinic day. The pharmacist at Noupoort orders the medicines for the clinic and the police drop it off with one of our clinic staff. The farm workers apprentice programme continues as all the apprentices live on the farms.

We have a very vulnerable group in our community of beneficiaries, the Karoo nomad encampment. There are 54 men, women and children. The children’s meals at school are no longer available. Their only source of income is casual work, which has dried up. They live 50km from Colesberg, in lockdown. The Trust has to date undertaken the responsibility of ensuring that they have food, water and access to the clinic. Our project manager, who is also a member of Rotary, has worked very hard to secure funding from Rotary to drill a borehole on site for them, the nearest water point was 2.5 km away. A farmer offered his services and only charged for the diesel. The Hantam Trust assisted with the concrete slab and the mount for the hand pump and trough (for the dogs and donkeys) which has ensured clean water closer to the encampment.

The hand pump is now connected and the water is flowing thanks to Rotary . Our Project manager has a special permit to bring out the clinic sisters each Wednesday, she uses this opportunity to deliver food and cleaning products to the Karoo nomads. We have received some emergency funding from Kinderfonds Mamas in the Netherlands which will enable us to provide this service until the end of June. All the families have had a medical check-ups during the last two weeks .

Kind Regards

Lesley Osler

Director

Hantam Community Education Trust P O Box 151 Colesberg 9795