My project

Cotlands Johannesburg

Cotlands is a South African non-profit organisation that provides early learning opportunities to children without access to formal education. Assistance is achieved by early learning playgroups, toy libraries, nutrition, health, psychological and residential child care. Cotlands is presently operating in five provinces and I am working for the facility in Johannesburg, that already exists since 1936. 

I am working from Monday to Friday from 8 am to 4 or 5 pm. But as I am alsoliving in my project I often work longer because I see that help is needed somewhere or donations have to be collected at a special time. For the moment there are three different divisions in that I am working: The Units, the Toy Library and the office. 

The Units

Twice a week, on Mondays and Wednesdays, I am working in the Units. The Units include all the projects where I am directly working with children. In the mornings my work begins in the Early Learning Groups that are comparable to preschool. Here I am working together with Stella and two teachers. Every morning at 8 o’clock children from the neighbourhood at the age of three to six are arriving in our Cotlands classroom. Before the class starts they are all getting porridge for breakfast. After that school can begin! We usually start reading out a story to the children, then review it bit by bit and transfer it to their everyday life. That’s how they should learn from a cute animal story for example to be economical with their food. After the reading session we assemble different play and learning stations where the children can do puzzles, paint, play with dough, play cooking and many other things. The focus of these games is often put on colours, basic shapes or names of animals or food for example. Many things like definitions of shapes (“a square has four equal sides and four corners” etc.) are repeated every day but are still difficult to remember for some of the children.  But sometimes that’s also a linguistic problem because English isn’t their first language. 

If the weather is good we also go out to play. At the Cotlands property there are several small playgrounds where the children love to play. And it’s an important place for them because it’s one of the very few places here where it is save for them to play. At the playgrounds we try to teach them things like rope skipping, to walk on stilts or playing basketball and cricket.

After playing it is always time to sing – not quite my favourite part because after that I can’t get the melodies out of my head for the whole day – and then it’s already lunchtime. After a short prayer the children get their lunch and Stella and I are also taking our lunch break.

After lunch we are helping with the baby massage or the after-school care. To the after-school care school children from the neighbourhood are coming and we assist them with their homework and supervise those that just come for playing. When the students go home at 4 pm, and also if we got some spare time in between, we usually go and help at the Baby Unit. This unit is the only place that is always manned and it gives home to 11 abandonned babies and two older children at the moment. Cotlands ambition is to reunite the children with their families or to find adoptive parents for them. The babies that are living here for the moment are at the age of two to 18 months and need a lot of care. Our job normally is to play with them, but also to feed them – and that can be the very hardest job! – to change their nappies, to dress them, to do baby massages and anything else that accrues. At about five o’clock when the babies go to bed we normally leave and try to get rid of all the children’s songs that are stuck into our heads!

The Toy Library

On Tuesdays and Thursdays we are working in the Toy Library. That’s a library with many many different toys for children categorized into different learning targets or themes. Children can come here and borrow the toys for two weeks and we also use them in the Early Learning Groups or the Baby Unit. Our Toy Library here in Johannesburg isn’t the only one. Cotlands founded an own Toy Library association that hosts seminars and workshops for future librarians, so there are many more spread all over South Africa and there are more and more new libraries opening. Then we are also helping to prepare a lot of things for the new libraries by making lists of the toys, photographing all of the items, numbering and varnishing them and much more.

The work that we do in the library isn’t very difficult or exciting, but sometimes it is a pleasant variation because even if we love playing with the children sometimes it is nice to recover from all the action and the attention that they need.

The Office

On Fridays we are working in the office. Cotlands’ offices are quite big and there are approximately 25 people working in them. We have to do jobs like inventories or other small jobs to help the staff. This also aren’t very challenging duties but nevertheless most of the time we enjoy it.

I hope that I could already give you a helpful overview of my work. If you want to see a little bit more just watch the Cotlands video below or visit the organisation's homepage!

Cotlands http://www.cotlands.org.za

"From a home for unmarried mothers and orphans to a multi-faceted national organisation, constantly evolving to meet the needs of a changing modern society."

Cotlands