Highlights of High Season: Part One

Painting African Impact colours on the
outside of Inkanyezi Creche. 

It’s been a busy few months for African Impact in St Lucia, as we welcomed even more volunteers than were expected when our Mozambique project was forced to close due to immigration issues. 

This meant that over the last three months we’ve been able to accomplish more than ever, and will be splitting our updates from peak season (from June through August) into small sections so you will be able to see more photographs and get the real details of our many achievements. 

Keep checking back over the next week to see the complete update on how the last few months in St Lucia have gone!

Building and Refurbishment

Where do we begin? Since we have had so many volunteers over the past two months, this has meant that we have had plenty of hands to get dirty on various activities including painting, bed making, the construction of a stall and crèche building!

Refurbishments to the classroom at Simunye Creche were completed over the children’s winter holiday. Volunteers scraped the walls of any old paint, sanded them down, and filled any holes with poly-filler before repainting the walls. The teachers were delighted with the look of their new classroom, which was followed up by the volunteers making a tyre course on the playground.

Hard at work making a tyre course at Snenhlanhla Creche.

Volunteers started and completed a stall at the side of the road over a three week period, where the Khula Support Group could sell their crafts. Volunteers sanded and sawed, fitted wood slats, built a table on the side of the road and sealed the wood with a lacquer. The ladies in our support group are now able to sell their own crafts without African Impact, a great step towards our aims for sustainability!

After many months of fundraising, preparations and brick-making, the classroom of Inkanyezi Creche has been completed, thanks to a lot of hard work and dedication on the part of our volunteers. It was an emotional time for all as we emptied and tore down the old Inkanyezi Creche. However, volunteers put their all into making sure it was completed over the holiday period so that the children had a classroom to return to in mid-July. Volunteer's tasks included making mortar, laying bricks, and painting. 

To read a blog about the opening of Inkanyezi Creche's classroom, visit a past blog or check out our newsletter Sizabantu. 

Some volunteers decorating signs for the Support Group
Stall and our AMREF Garden.

During the final week of the big Inkanyezi build, a group of students aged 15-18 from America and Canada helped in the final preparations for the school. They also designed and constructed a tyre course and built a fence around the already existing garden.

Throughout peak season, we also had small refurbishments and building projects that many volunteers helped with. This included bed making for Inkanyezi, Dukuduku and Impumelelo creches, as well as creating garden signs to be put in our vegetable patches.

Holiday Club

The children in local communities Khula and Ezwenelisha were on school holidays during the first three weeks of July. This gave our volunteers the opportunity to develop their own ideas and utilize their different talents to teach the children new skills at Holiday Club. Best of all, the kids at Holiday Club got to do what they love best: be kids!

In order to make new and exciting plans, every week of Holiday Club was given its own theme. Week One had a 'Music' theme, where volunteers choreographed dances to 'You Can't Stop the Beat' from the movie Hairspray.     

Other songs included 'We’re all in this together' from High School Musical and the famous 'Beat it' by Michael Jackson. For those who were not musically inclined, volunteers created maracas with the children, made from plastic bottles and pebbles. 

Not long after the maracas were complete, a band of fifty children began shaking their maracas and bums to the beat!

In honour of the Olympics in London, Week Two at Holiday Club was a World Sports-themed Holiday Club in which the volunteers planned a mini World Cup tournament and painted the flags of various countries on the children’s faces.

Finally, Week Three of Holiday Club was ‘Animal’ themed. Volunteers played various animal games with children.  They held relay races in which the children ran and pretended to be different animals. 

Volunteers also made dough and shaped it into different animals, baking it at night and bringing them back the next day for the children to paint.