Unsung Community Heroes: Franciske Venter - Creating your own disabilities. Dealing with Cerebral Palsy

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.

Teaser for my next post on Franciske Venter a lady with Cerebral Palsy that refuses for life to get her down.

Unsung Community Hero: The story of the Gelvandale Sports Club

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.