There are two interesting parts to this speech, the first is the influence that teachers have on individuals and the second part is the power of reading.
Teachers often play a fundamental role in the development of a child. Sometimes more of a role than parents. Parents are often caught in the same positions as their kids so they are not able to beak away from the difficult situations that they find themselves in. Meanwhile a teacher, who might have the same issues will be able to break away for the time that they are at school and give kids an experience that gives them hope and the ability to dream.
The below speech is on Ted Talks and have not been involved at all but I thought that it could be interesting to help inspire someone to change the environment around them.
Franciske Venter has cerebral palsy but, even though she has reason to find life challenging due to her disability, she takes life as a challenge and finds ways to live her dreams.
She was born with her disability and life was challenging from day one. She struggled to walk and she needed speech therapists from a very young age.
She initially went to a primary school for kids that did not have disabilities and she found it difficult and fell very quickly behind the rest of the kids due to her problems with her fine and gross motor skills. So she was moved to Pretoria Cerebral Palsy School where she could be close to her physiotherapist and where she could get individual treatment.
Franciske was always a busy kid and she needed something to help her deal with her frustrations and extra energy so she started to play sport. She started with javelin and shot put and after three months she got provincial colours in sport.
Sport was motivating for her, at first she did not want to be seen as disabled but then she started to make friends and she was able to talk to them about her disabilities. She realized that she could make a difference in sport.
She always wanted to play cricket but there was no cricket for kids with cerebral palsy. In 2003 she placed a picture of herself and the Proteas captain at the time, Hansie Cronje, in the Huisgenoot. This was spotted at the Titans Cricket Union and she was encouraged to go out and look for a form of cricket that she and others like her can play.
She did a little research and found that there was a format in India that she liked. She started her own club and introduced this form of cricket to South Africa.
A highlight in her life was in 2014 when India toured South Africa and she got to play against them. She learned a lot from the Indian side because they have been playing disabled cricket for a longer period of time and were far better than South Africa and they were willing to share.
She also coached KFC Mini-Cricket for kids with varying disabilities and she had to deal with a lot of challenges both physically and mentally.
Now she is busy writing a book with a ghost writer about herself and disabled cricket in South Africa. It is a large project and she is currently overwhelmed by it but she is not going to give up. She knows that it will help parent of disabled kids and it will help disabled kids know that they are not alone and be positive and they can achieve their goals.
Other than sport she has also had the opportunity to act in 7de Laan, a South African soap opera, as an extra. She want to take it seriously but she knows that there are challenges and it will be difficult for her to get a permanent role in a series or soap opera. Her next step is to take classes in acting and see how far she can get.
Her message is that if you have something in life that holds you back, don't give up and you can achieve your goals. You only live once and take advantage of every moment you get.
The Gelvandale Cricket Club was founded in 1977 and is considered one of the best cricket clubs in a disadvantaged area in South Africa.
The club initially started as a cricket club but has now changed to a general club that offers a lot of different sports including lawn bowls, tennis and hockey.
Many Proteas cricket players like, Robin Peterson, Alviro Petersen, Garnett Kruger, Ashwell Prince etc and ExProteas coach Russel Domingo all started their cricket at the club however if it wasn't for apartheid who knows how many other Proteas players they would have produced.
Gelvendale also had many well know players from the New Brighton area that played their cricket against the club and the most well noted was Khaya Majola who often played against them.
Even the Jordaan brothers, Danny that is well known in football and Max who works for Cricket South Africa, all played their cricket at the club.
However we cannot just look at the top players at the club to see the value of the club. In talking to Robin Peterson, he told me that the club was a fantastic place for him to go to after school and it allowed him to make a lot of friends by playing sport. He said that it gave him a fantastic opportunity to believe in himself and keep off the streets where there were some bad distractions.
The problem in the club today is that even though they are still trying to get kids off the streets and out of gangs and other less than desirable occupations, they are battling to get the kids involved in sport.
Gelvandale Sports Club are actively involved in the local schools even busing them in after school so they can play various sports in after school. A lot of these schools do not have facilities that will allow them to play extramural activities but with the first class facilities they have to opportunity to play sport. Also the schools can focus in spending the little money that they have to focus on education instead of paying for sporting facilities.
Rochard Dolley, youth and events manager, at the club talks to us about what the club is about and who supports the club, he talks about the future plans of the club and what they are looking to do to get kids involved and the survival of the club.
I met Belinda Allie in 2012 when her Primary School, Malabar
Primary School won the opportunity to play against the Proteas in a match of
KFC Mini-Cricket.
Belinda got involved in cricket in the 1980’s when cricket
was considered at men’s game. The area that she came from was meant to be
playing mini-cricket but that was not the case so the schools in the area had a
meeting and some of the men in her area said that she was a good leader so they
should use her to run the programme in the area.
The first reaction was that she was not strong enough to run
the programme but Belinda believed in herself and she told them not to underestimate
her.
She was given a 3 month probation period to prove herself
and she flourished in those three months. She started helping her coaches and
they all started growing so much that after the three month probation period a
lot of the other coaches asked if they could take over the leadership in her
area.
Luckily for her, there were more coaches that supported her
than what opposed her. Everyone got a chance to validate as to why they think
that the various parties should get the role but in the end everyone came to understand
that she was the best candidate and she was unanimously voted in.
Since then until today she has been running mini-cricket in
the Northern Areas of Port Elizabeth.
She contributes her success to the massive support that she
gets from the coaches in her region. They are all motivated, passionate and are all willing to go the extra mile. If you
have the passion, and no matter what conditions you find yourself in the kids
will be there to make all the hard work worthwhile.
She says that she recently hosted a coaching session at
Gelvandale Cricket Club where she was coaching some of the new coaches in the
programme and some of them could not even hold a bat properly but they were
passionate and their focus was on the kids so they learned very quickly and now
they can take their passion back to their kids and can get them started at KFC Mini-Cricket.
Belinda is currently the deputy head of Bayview Primary
School in Helenvale, Port Elizabeth which is an area rife in gangs. It is not
an area where it is easy to motivate kids to play sport but she has found that
all the kids need in the area is love and they are all willing to play sport
and look for other avenues in life where they do not have to resort to gangsterism.
Sport breaks a lot of barriers in her school and she has
created a safe haven in the school where all the kids can stay after school and
just have fun.
She was concerned that since Helenvale is a dangerous area,
the kids from New Brighton and Gelvaldale do not want to go into the area to
play sport but Gelvandale Cricket Club has allowed her kids to play KFC
Mini-Cricket at their club and they are also looking at playing other sport at
the club.
Her kids passion is what motivates her to look for
alternatives so that she can overcome the issues that she faces in her area. She
finally has a place to coach her kids where they can play sport away from the
dangers in her area. All the kids want to do is get active and here they can do
it in a safe place.
Gary Dolley, the
president of Gelvandale Sports Club has got a developmental hockey programme for
the kids to take part in. They also play football, tennis and other sport.
Belinda finds that the kids that she coaches and teaches are
blessed with a natural sports ability. She finds them thirsty to learn.
There is another programme that she is involved in. She used
to teach at Malabar Primary School and the school it situated in an area where
there are a lot of foreigners that live there. They have people from India, Jordan,
Pakistan etc… This is an area that is a lot safer than Helenvale and parents
are keen to watch their kids.
Belinda organized for these parents to get involved in
coaching their kids KFC Mini-Cricket, and it did not matter if it was
mother-daughter, father-son, father-daughter or mother-son they parents and
kids were all invited. The parents love it and they are creating lifetime
memories with their kids.
Now the better cricket players have fallen part of the
Gelvandale hub that has been organized by Cricket South Africa and the Eastern
Province Cricket Board.
Belinda is a remedial therapist and she has kids that suffer
from foetal alcohol syndrome and other kids that have troubles studying but
sport gives them a chance to play. The best time to find these kids and to deal
with the problems that they are facing at school is whilst the kids are playing
sport. You can encourage them and just talk to them about their problems.
In the modern school syllabus you have to have physical
education, life orientation, and they need to promote participation at the
school and that helps them develop a healthy mind by also taking part in
physical activities.
Belinda does a lot of coaching at the Gelvandale Cricket
club. She finds the club, the coaches, the board and absolutely everyone
involved in the club so helpful and professional. She has meetings, KFC
Mini-Cricket festivals, coaching and any kind of assistance that she needs.
She thinks that KFC Mini-Cricket teams and schools should contact
the local clubs that can help them with organizing their sport and festivals
especially for the schools that don’t have adequate facilities.
To help with coaching the kids the club often sends their
senior players and even some of the international players that have come from
the club get involved in coaching her kids.
Kids at her school need to look for good role models and
Belinda says that her principal and her teachers all become role models for the
kids. The club also helps with supplying role models for her kids to inspire
them and to show them a different way of life to the one that they used to.
Belinda has even got the police involved to talk to the kids and to assist the
kids.
As role models the teachers have a lot of pressure but they
also have a huge responsibility to be correct role models so Belinda and her
school principal provide support for the teachers through seminars, psychologists
and motivational speakers.
So how do you make a change in your area? Belinda says that you
need passion, passion and passion. She believes that if you bless others then
god will bless you. Her daughter has just qualified as a doctor and there are
other blessings in her life and she believe that it is due to her helping
others that God is helping her. Anyone can do what she is doing and all it takes
is for you to take the initiative and follow your passion.
The South African kids have progressed quite far in
qualifying for this year’s Danone Nations Cup World Final. So far five schools
have qualified for the South African National Finals with four more still to
qualify.
I have not posted anything since last years Danone Nations
Cup World Finals that was held in Spain and won by Brazil so I’m sure that most
of the new blog readers do not know anything about the tournament. I know that
I am going to sound like I am promoting the tournament, and I guess that I am,
but I do believe that it is a great tournament and I hope that more schools
will get involved next year. Next years registrations will only open in January
and the entry forms will be found on the SASFA website and at the local SASFA
offices.
The Danone Nations Cup started in the 2000 with 8 pioneering
countries. The countries were France, Italy, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey
and the Ukraine. The tournament was held in France, where it would be held
until the 2010 Danone Nations Cup World Final in South Africa, and was won by
France. The tournament was really in its infancy and most of the Nations did
not take it as seriously as what it should have been taken.
Eventually by 2003 the event had grown to 32 teams and had
become a serious test of skill together will the Danone Motto to “Believe in
your dreams”. This year will also be remembered for South Africa’s first
tournament win. South Africa walked into the final where they found a good Portuguese
team and beat them fare and square. Zinedine Zidane became the ambassador for
the tournament that year and these little South Africans taught him a thing or
two about football.
South Africa has gone on to win the tournament a record
three times which is quite a feat when you see that teams like Spain, Brazil
and Argentina have all won the tournament only once each. Teams like England,
Italy and Germany have not even made it to the finals.
The last time that South Africa won the tournament was in
2009. The World Finals were meant to be held in Brazil in 2009 but due to the
N1H1 virus the tournament was postponed until the next year. The 2009 Brazil
World Final was meant to be the first World Final held outside of France. The
poor South African kids from Bree Primary School thought that they had missed
out on the opportunity of a lifetime but in 2010 Danone organized the 2009 and
2010 World Finals in South Africa.By
default South Africa became the first country outside of France to host the
World Final and the biggest World Final that the tournament had ever held.
By this stage the Danone Nations Cup had progressed to 40
countries so since we were hosting two World Finals we had 80 teams playing in
two tournaments. Our little 2010 team from a very poor area in KZN only managed
to come 22nd but they will always remember the tournament and the
typified the main goal of the tournament and that is to have fun. They had a
blast.
Our 2009 team instead was one of the smallest teams, in
stature, but the biggest in heart and skill. I made friends with a Spanish TV commentator
that said that the South African team was not that bad but there is a Swiss
team that is unstoppable. He compared their players to the likes of Alexander
Frei, Stéphane Chapuisat, Hakan Yakin and other players that I had never heard
of. The Swiss team was also full of giants compared to our players. Our wings
were especially small. In the end my mate had to swallow his words. Our little
boys stood up to these giants and clobbered Switzerland 2-0 in the final that
was held in Orlando Stadium in Soweto. The little South Africans were so
confident and in so much control that they bullied the Swiss kids.
Last year the tournament was held at the famous Bernabeu Stadium
in Madrid, Spain. Our team was overwhelmed by some very powerful teams like
Canada, who even had some fantastic girls playing for them. Even though the
team did not compete for the top positions in the tournament they were
extremely popular, they came out of their shells and used the tournament to
meet as many kids as possible from as many countries as possible.
What is great about this tournament is that there is no prize
money for the schools to win. The point of the tournament is for kids to have
fun and “Believe in your dreams”. I spoke to Zidane in 2010, luckily I speak Italian
because his English is not that great, and he fully believed that kids of that
age must play and have fun. Some of these kids come from poor areas from all
over the world like Haiti, and Senegal or the poorest areas of Brazil,
Argentina and South Africa (our kids didn’t have electricity and some didn’t even
have running water) but for a week they could escape the hardships from their
lives for a week.
A couple of famous players that played in the Danone Nations
Cup:
Rowan Williams
Kamohelo Mokotjo winner of the 2003 Danone Nations Cup World
Finals
The Sanlam Kay Motsepe Schools Cup finishes off this weekend with a parade in Virginia in the Free State. Harmony Academy won the event and are going to get R 1 000 000 to use on legacy projects. Harmony Academy is well known in South Africa for their soccer history but the area is also known for its Gold mining producing one of the world’s richest gold mining regions.
The town’s name comes from 2 railway surveyors from Virginia in the United States who in 1890 etched their names and birthplace on a boulder near the farm Merrispruit. When the railway siding was established the name was adopted. The next significant date was in 1955 when gold was found on the banks of the Sand River.
It is significant to know that, during the apartheid era, black people were not allowed to live in the town and had to commute from Meloding. This is quite fascinating since Harmony Academy is a predominantly black school and they have uplifted the area due to their soccer skills. Another interesting fact is that the town exists due to the various gold mines that are in the area and they have been built on the blood and sweat of their black workers.
Naturally the kids that will be involved in the parade will not be thinking about the history of the area when they drive through on their open bus. They are the future of the area and they will just be thinking about the future that they are about to create for themselves.
About the mine
The Harmony Free State Operations are located on the south-western corner of the Witwatersrand Basin, between the towns of Allanridge, Welkom, Theunissen and Virginia. The basin, situated on the Kaapvaal Craton, has been filled by a 6-kilometre thick succession of sedimentary rocks, which extends laterally for hundreds of kilometers.
The Free State goldfield is divided into two sections, cut by the north-south De Bron Fault. This major structure has a vertical displacement of about 1 500m in the region of Bambanani, as well as a lateral shift of 4km. This lateral shift can allow a reconstruction of the orebodies of Unisel to the west of the De Bron and Merriespruit to the east. A number of other major faults (Stuirmanspan, Dagbreek, Arrarat and Eureka) lie parallel to the De Bron Fault.
The western margin area is bound by synclines and reverse thrust faults and is structurally complex. Towards the south and east, reefs sub-crop against overlying strata, eventually cutting out against the Karoo to the east of the lease area.
Mining that has taken place is mostly deep-level underground mining, exploiting the narrow, generally shallow dipping tabular reefs.
The Basal Reef is the most common reef and is mined at nearly all the shafts. It varies from a single pebble lag to channels of more than 2m in thickness. It is commonly overlain by shale, which gets thicker further North.
The second major reef is the Leader Reef, located 15-20m above the Basal Reef. This is mostly mined by the shafts in the South. The reef consists of multiple conglomerate units, separated by thin quartzitic zones, often getting up to 4 m thick.
