The second half of our community service project sent us to the Maranatha Streetworkers Trust, an organization similar to S.O.S. They remove children from abusive and neglectful family situations and take care of them until their families are able to take care of them. What's especially wonderful about Maranatha is that they will take in the child for as long as they need to and for as long as possible. Some of their children have stayed at the organization into their 20s. Maranatha is an organization that does everything possible to help someone when they're down, whether that person is a 7 year old or a 50 year old, who may receive help as part of a program that they have for destitute adults.
Both S.O.S. and Maranatha do incredible work for children, work that most people in the world could not do, but I do believe that Maranatha has a much better organized program that appeared, from my experiences to have better success in helping the children to heal. I enjoyed my time at Maranatha more because I felt that I was a part of that process.
Just like at S.O.S., we spent about a week with the kids there. They had a lot more kids than S.O.S., and many of them were also older, which I preferred because I find it easier to connect with older kids rather than younger ones. We did a lot of the same stuff with the kids at Maranatha as we did with the kids at S.O.S. We played a lot of games outside, like soccer, the floor is lava, and jump rope. We also had a chance to help them with there homework because they went back to school the last days that we were there.
I spent a lot of time focusing on the issue of education and access to good education in South Africa as part of my project for my classes in South Africa. So, having a chance to see where these kids were school-wise was something that I was very interested in seeing. Pretty much every kid I talked to was so smart. They didn't necessarily have a lot of book smarts, but they had life smarts, something that is honestly much more important in the grand scheme of things. But, to see how far behind a lot of these kids are made me so angry and sad at the same time. I helped one of the girls with math, and I could tell that it wasn't her favorite subject, but she was trying really hard. She was at least 11 years old, but she could barely do addition and subtraction, something that is mastered by most American students by age 8. It's just horrifying to me that most South African kids have access to poor education in addition to the fact that many have parents who either can't help or support their education, or, they don't believe that an education will be worth anything.
That being said, I had a wonderful time with these kids, and like the children at S.O.S., they taught me a lot more than I taught them. I might have helped out with some math problems and other book smarts, but they taught me a lot about life smarts.
Both S.O.S. and Maranatha do incredible work for children, work that most people in the world could not do, but I do believe that Maranatha has a much better organized program that appeared, from my experiences to have better success in helping the children to heal. I enjoyed my time at Maranatha more because I felt that I was a part of that process.
Just like at S.O.S., we spent about a week with the kids there. They had a lot more kids than S.O.S., and many of them were also older, which I preferred because I find it easier to connect with older kids rather than younger ones. We did a lot of the same stuff with the kids at Maranatha as we did with the kids at S.O.S. We played a lot of games outside, like soccer, the floor is lava, and jump rope. We also had a chance to help them with there homework because they went back to school the last days that we were there.
I spent a lot of time focusing on the issue of education and access to good education in South Africa as part of my project for my classes in South Africa. So, having a chance to see where these kids were school-wise was something that I was very interested in seeing. Pretty much every kid I talked to was so smart. They didn't necessarily have a lot of book smarts, but they had life smarts, something that is honestly much more important in the grand scheme of things. But, to see how far behind a lot of these kids are made me so angry and sad at the same time. I helped one of the girls with math, and I could tell that it wasn't her favorite subject, but she was trying really hard. She was at least 11 years old, but she could barely do addition and subtraction, something that is mastered by most American students by age 8. It's just horrifying to me that most South African kids have access to poor education in addition to the fact that many have parents who either can't help or support their education, or, they don't believe that an education will be worth anything.
That being said, I had a wonderful time with these kids, and like the children at S.O.S., they taught me a lot more than I taught them. I might have helped out with some math problems and other book smarts, but they taught me a lot about life smarts.