KNYSNA TOWNSHIP PRE-SCHOOL


Education is one of the highest goods in today’s world and should be made available and accessible to everyone. Unfortunately, not everyone has free access to it. 
 
In the early nineties, apartheid came to an end in South Africa but the deep scars remain present especially in South Africa’s townships. Townships, used as a method to segregate black South Africans through the Group Areas Act of 1950, are located on the outskirts of urban areas and provide large populations with small portions of land. 

Nelson Mandela once said, “education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”. Currently, only 9.6% of South Africa’s population speaks English, in the Western Cape it’s only 24% and in the township communities, the statistics are far worse.

We took this as an opportunity to give something back to the local communities and to help children receive the education that they deserve: by building a pre-school in a Knysna Township in cooperation with Peggy’s Art & Tours. We started this project last year, but when our beloved Peggy Dlephu (who we first met in 2017) passed away in May, the project was placed on hold to give her family the time and respect to handle this tragic loss. 

So far, we have established a soup kitchen which runs three times a week for school-going and kindergarten kids (94 children at the moment) and we donate stationery, school uniforms and books through the tours that we run. We also encourage our guests to support, donate and buy proudly South African hand-made products to uplift the local communities. At the pre-school, we are busy finishing a heartfelt project with a converted container structure of two classrooms plus a kitchen and outside toilets. 

We would like to thank Peggy again for her amazing work in the township community and her grateful soul. She always had a smile on her face and was such a funny, outgoing and loving person. Her loss is truly a crime and we are still shocked by it but her family continue to manage her business and honour her work daily.
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