Inkululeko Daycare Centre: Upgrading the book and toy library at Inkululeko Daycare Centre - Report 3

Wed, 11 July 2007

Tshwane Leadership Foundation: Upgrading the Book and Toy Library at Inkululeko Day-care Centre for preschool and primary school children

The establishment through this project of a good quality Toy and Book Library for the pre-primary and primary school children of Salvokop near inner-city Pretoria has added value to their education and started to help teach parents how to use educational resources to enhance children's learning and development.

The full cost of the project is R59,840 (excluding the SASIX administration fee). All the funding has now been received. The following instalments were received: R2,000 on 14 August 2006, R40,250 on 30 October 2006 and R17,600 on 14 March 2007.

Project activities completed

Since its beginning in June 2002, a total of 159 children have benefited from the Book and Toy Library. Each child receives a bag of toys and books, for example, puzzles and nature books, to take home for a week or two weeks.

Now with more space, more toys and a regular available educator (our co-ordinator, Daphney Mugeri) there has been more interest and we are convinced that the greater variety of toys and books will have a greater influence on the lives of the children and their parents. We now also have the resources to run effective play days and holiday programmes. The play days encourage the children to join the library and to play and read. There are 55 members at present, but many more have shown interest.

• Employment and training of toy library co-ordinator: Our new co-ordinator, Daphney Mugeri, was trained by Active Library of South Africa (ALSA) in Johannesburg in August 2006 and by Helmine van Zyl, our educational resource expert. Helmine has been helping the co-ordinator regularly since August 2006. She was especially helpful with the choice of toys and books and the general library system.

• The container (instead of wooden hut) was erected, painted and supplied with electricity, burglar bars on the windows and a fence.

• Shelves were erected. Very strong steel shelves and wood were painted and vanished.

• A computer and some toys, books, many games and some CDs and DVDs were bought. An order has been placed for the balance of books which will be bought at the beginning of May. These books are relevant to our context. Some of the games and toys were bought to be used at the premises on Friday afternoons: the children often hang around the toy library and we thought it an ideal time for children to use skipping ropes and hula hoops and play games like chess. (The preschool children have access to outdoor toys, but the primary school children do not and they look with longing eyes at the day-care centre. There is no space at their homes to use such equipment.)

• Two parent meetings and a community meeting were held.

  • 29 August 2006: Special PTA meeting: 19 day-care centre parents attended
  • 14 October 2006: Community meeting: 119 adults from the community attended
  • 22 October 2006: Our first play day cum workshop – only one parent turned up
  • 10 February 2007: Official opening of toy library and a play day
  • 6 March 2007: Special PTA meeting: 37 day-care centre parents attended. 15 parents signed up to attend the training by our educational expert, Helmine van Zyl and the toy library co-ordinator, Daphney Mugeri
  • 10 March 2007: Play day. 26 children attended (many regulars were away at a camp or swimming) We raised R78 (R3 per child per play day).

• A television set and DVD player were bought and are regularly used by the day-care centre and for the holiday programme for the older children (26 March 2007).

Ongoing activities

We have not yet reached the target number of library members, but the co-ordinator is continually still marketing the library to gain more members. 55 children are members at present. We are convinced that the play opportunities on Friday afternoons (library day) will attract more older children.

Letters to remind day-care children to join have been sent out and more parents are registering their children. We are confident that we will recruit at least 90 of the 120 target by the end of 2007.

Training of parents was planned to take place at Miekie Breytenbach’s farewell function on 31 March 2007 but the training did not happen because the educational expert Helmine Van Zyl got sick. On 28 April two parents were trained but Daphney is still planning to get at least seven more parents to be trained. The plan will still be pursued during the next play day on 26 May.

The system is not completely computerised yet, but Daphney is working very hard to take stock of the newly bought material on the computer. Daphney is not yet a member of ALSA but should be registered by June 2007.

Challenges addressed

A. Community involvement

We have faced challenges around recruiting and training volunteers. An appeal did go out for volunteers to help. We have one volunteer who has been coming regularly for the past six months, and a second volunteer joined at the 28 April play day, but otherwise have not been successful in recruiting volunteers.

We have found that parents sign up for training at community or PTA meetings but then do not come to help at play days. The three play days so far have been popular, but more adults are needed – at least one per table. Local volunteers expect to be paid – many work every day, e.g. hawking, and do not have the time to come to play days. We now plan to focus on training parents to use the toys with their children rather than training them as volunteers and insisting that they come and help at play days as previously envisaged.

Getting adults interested in enrolling their children and coming to events has not been easy. People try to make a living during the day and are reluctant to go out at night. Street lights in the area are vandalised as soon as they are repaired – the crime rate is quite high. We realise that we have to continue working at getting the community interested, but that it will take time.

We are still looking for more volunteers and are using the following methods:

• letters sent home with the children
• talking to the parents and encouraging them to visit the library to see the changes and what is on offer
• providing refreshments at the play days.

B. Change to a container

We erected a shipping container rather than a Wendy house as originally planned. This change in plan was cleared with SASIX. We are grateful for the extra money we received for this container. It is more spacious and more secure than a wooden hut and maintenance costs should be lower.

C. Change in fee structure

We changed the suggested fees of R25 per year to R3 per month or R36 per year to make payments more manageable for parents and increase our income per child slightly.

D. Change in audiovisual equipment

We were donated a CD player, and, in consultation with SASIX, decided to use the funds allocated to buying a CD player to buy a digital projector instead. We appreciate the flexibility of SASIX in this regard.

Project costs

Item	Actual cost	Budget	Balance
Training (August 2006)	1,270.00	-	-
Transport to Johannesburg	200.00	-	-
Educational Resource expert	1,000.00	-	-
ALLSA membership	210.00	-	-
Total Training	2,680.00	3,000.00	320.00
Salary to date	7,200.00	9,600.00	2,400.00
Container (instead of hut)	20,349.00	-	-
Paint for container	1,289.45	-	-
Labour (painter)	500.00	-	-
Window	250.00	-	-
Fan	399.95	-	-
Total container (structure)	22,788.40	17,850.00	-4,938.40
Wheels for shelves	16.40	-	-
Steel	892.00	-	-
Paint	690.88	-	-
Labour (welder)	1,000.00	-	-
Wood	1,600.00	-	-
Welding rods etc	25.00	-	-
Cutting disks	25.98	-	-
Total shelves	4,250.26	2,000.00	-2,250.26
Toys from Smile	1,724.25	-	-
Toys and CD's from Educational Toys	1,212.85	-	-
Kumon Magnetic boards	480.00	-	-
DVD's	329.84	-	-
Books from Shutter & Shootter and Book Travellers	2,142.73	-	-
Total equipment	5,889.67	11,400.00	5,510.33
Computer	5,395.00	-	-
Software	375.00	-	-
Total Computer	5,770.00	8,000.00	2,230.00
TV license	225.00	-	-
TV	1,899.00	-	-
Aerial	26.99	-	-
DVD player	299.99	-	-
Digital Projector (instead of CD player)	6,276.00	-	-
Total TV/ DVD player / Digital Project	8,726.98	8,000.00	-726.98
YTD Actual vs Budget expenditure	57,305.31	59,850.00	2,544.69

Impact on the children

At a recent community concert, a parent stood up and said thank you to the community centre for the different activities and the way the children are kept busy. He especially mentioned the toy library and homework centre. His son has many social and learning problems, but has shown significant progress through the intervention of Daphney. He now enjoys books and has more self-confidence.

The homework centre borrows educational toys from the library and the children enjoy them. Most children have shown significant progress – material like the clock, counters, books have helped the teaching progress and made it fun.

The day-care centre has borrowed the number lines and construction toys, CDs and DVDs. The teacher reports that all the Grade R children have already shown much improvement in numeracy. The CDs are used for music lessons and the children have performed some songs and dances – they have gained much self-confidence.

Here are some case studies of the impact on individual children:

• Grandy (Grade 3) read 24 of our library books between August and November 2006!
• Lebogang (Grade 3) has been a member of the toy library since she was three years old. Her mother used to help in the library and homework centre before she got a job. Lebogang showed signs of learning problems as a pre-schooler. However, due to her mother reading her books and helping her with educational toys, she is now doing well in school.
• Vhukhudo - It was difficult for him to read and write, but since he joined the toy and book library, with the help of his parents and Daphney he is doing much better.
• Junior - This little boy can show how to construct a car or anything else from Fun Toy and is also able to read and write better than before he joined the library.

Monitoring and evaluation

The library co-ordinator submits monthly reports on the activities and statistics of the library to the principal and the educational resource expert. In January 2007 the library co-ordinator’s performance was evaluated by the staff of 15 as successful and her contract was renewed.

The project has been very successful so far. In our first play days, children just wanted to grab toys and hold them. They were extremely jealous of each other over the toys. However, now they relax and share toys and have become very creative. For instance, we provide fantasy toys and they play a story. We give them hand puppets and they start a talk show. The children express their feelings, their thoughts and things that have happened in their worlds through playing. Brain development takes place when a child solves problems – playing together encourages this! Having toys at home is a bonus for the parents too: slowly they are learning the importance and joy of playing with their children.

The “training” of adults has not been successful – perhaps the word training scares them, so in future we will just invite them to come see new things that have been bought for the children. This will be an informal training.

Our vision is: We see a whole, restored and empowered community where people flourish in God’s presence. The library helps to bring about this vision. It has already impacted on many lives. The problem we wanted to address is to keep children positively occupied, to help with their education and to facilitate better children-parent relations. A child learns through playing, and can only learn if he is emotionally secure. In this the library plays an important role. We see it as a long term investment.

Sustainability of the project

We need continued financial support to keep the library sustainable. The fees the library members pay are not enough, especially to subsidise the salary of the library co-ordinator. Currently we have sufficient funds until August 2007, but have approached other donors for finance for this salary beyond August 2007. For the rest of the year we can use Lotto funds and some of our church’s and individual funds for Daphney’s salary. The sustainability of this project is dependent on donations, as are the continued operation of the Day-care Centre and the Community Centre. We serve a very poor community and fees paid by the parents and fundraising events in the community cannot raise enough funds.

We have a small income-generating project where we hire out chairs, tables, crockery, a gas stove, a braai stand, a jumping castle, pop-corn and candy-floss machines to the community. We also hire out our church / kitchen / hall and our play area / swimming pool. We have expanded our marketing of this service, putting up advertisement posters outside our premises and on a railway bridge which is used by a lot of people both from our community, inner-city and surrounding neighbourhoods. We also communicate with parents, community, partner churches and stakeholders in meetings. So far one church has already hired the jumping castle for a church event. We also get income by charging for holiday programmes and a children’s swimming club, and we offer administration services such as typing, photocopying, faxing, laminating and computer use for a fee. We hope to increase the income we generate in future.

Inkululeko Daycare Centre: Upgrading the book and toy library at Inkululeko Daycare Centre - Report 2

Fri, 12 January 2007

14 September 2006

2nd Community Meeting to introduce toy library: More community members attended. The community was again informed about the new Library and invited to attend a work shop to learn how to play games with their children e.g. memory games

22 October 2006

The workshop come play day was held. Forty six children attended and enjoyed community games. Sadly only one parent came. We still have a long way to go to really get the community involved!

13 November 2006

After a few hiccups with weather and broken transport our container was finally delivered. The first painter we contracted did not show up. The 2nd one (a parent) we commissioned has started to paint the container inside and outside. When he is finished we can buy the shelving – otherwise we have nowhere else to store the shelving.

23 November 2006

Our toy library manager, Daphney Mugeri and her mentor, Mrs Helmine van Zyl, visited the library of a local primary school to become acquainted with their library system. Their system is too expensive to run and we will work out a different system to manage the library on computer.

28 November 2006

We have an appointment with a carpenter to give us a quote on the shelving.

Sept - Nov

Daphney is putting her training into practice: she takes her work very seriously. She has been very busy sorting donated toys and is busy training a volunteer to help her. She has also obtained the services of a volunteer to make bags for the toys, in which the children will carry home their choices.

Plans for December

Week 1: Painting of container will be complete and shelves will be made. Work out programme to be used on toy library computer.

Week 2: Buy special toys – take advantage of the special offers. Start to computerize inventory

Expenditure: Sept - Nov

Salary (R800 *3 months) R 2,400

Container R20,349

"Many, many thanks for understanding the necessity for changing our original plan from Wendy House to container. This change has caused delays in terms of the cost and finalizing of the project, but in the long run, the library will benefit from the extra space and improved security."

Inkululeko Daycare Centre: Upgrading the book and toy library at Inkululeko Daycare Centre - Report 1

Tue, 24 October 2006

It is with much gratitude and appreciation that we report on what has happened with the grant so far:

1. Daphney Mugeri has been appointed as the Toy Library co-ordinator

She has helped in the library before and has proved efficient and reliable. Her mentor will be Helmine van Zyl (3295326; Fax 3295758). Helmine is a retired librarian. She is a volunteer who has run our toy library since it started in 2002. She is also a member of ALSA (Active Library South Africa) and has attended their international conference in 2005. Helmine is busy enlisting the advice of the teachers on media centres of three different primary schols and other people in the field.

2. Daphney attended a four day course by ALSA on how to run the library effectively.

She has started to rearrange the present toys according to what she has learnt.

Costs: Planning Phase

Funds received: R2 000
Cost of course and affiliation to ASLA: R1 270
Travelling costs to Johannesburg (4 day taxi): R 200
Total spent to date: R1 470

3. We believe the project can only be successful if the community is involved.

A meeting was held on 29th August 2006, 19 parents attended. 9 Parents volunteered to help with cleaning of toys, accession of books and toys, and helping with play days. Points of discussion were:

• The background of this new library (Where the funds came from, what will be done with the funds)
• Introduction of New Library Co-ordinator (Daphney)
• The need for volunteers and areas where help is required.
• Suggestions from the community re library hours, time for workshops and play days as well as types of toys and books that they would like.

4. Conclusion

Helmine and Daphney will also address the general community meeting so as to get more members of the community involved.

A workshop for parents will be held on Saturday 14th October 2006 to explain board games and other educational toys to parents

5. We have started to gather information about Wendy House manufacturers.

6. It has become apparent that the Wendy House is too flimsy for the needs of the Toy Library.

A customised container at a cost of R17 850 needs to purchased as soon as possible for the project to continue. Additional funding will be secured by GGSA will be utilized for this purpose.

Many thanks for the big donation. We are positive that this will be a success.

Kind Regards,

Miekie Breytenbach
083 408 2294