Simple acts of goodness can change the life of SA’s children
The Universal Rights Association is showing how supporting a primary school in an underprivileged area has brought out the best in people from all walks of life who want to overcome social injustice. By
There are about 11 million people in South Africa who are food insecure, meaning they do not know where their next meal is coming from. Hunger and malnutrition impair the learning abilities of children and may force them to drop out of school and work instead, limiting and undermining their enjoyment of their right to education.
Humanity has three main problems: ignorance, poverty and disunity. Education is the key to tackling these problems, because an educated person will be in a better position to protect themselves from poverty, and it will be easier to deal with conflict and disunity in an educated society.
Quality education for all will be a sustainable and permanent solution to most of our problems. Quality education will feed the system and society with qualified, educated individuals who will build a just, equal and brighter future for all in South Africa.
We still have many challenges, especially in our public schooling system, in terms of the physical and socioeconomic conditions of the school environment and school children. As the Universal Rights Association, we believe that we should work for the improvement of our schools and children to at least give them an opportunity to concentrate on their studies and excel in their subjects in order to save themselves from those three enemies.
In 2021, we decided to start supporting a public school in Mamelodi, Pretoria, called Zamintuthuko Primary School.
It has about 580 pupils from Grade R to Grade 7 and only 10% of them can afford to bring lunch to school.
We decided to support this school with nutritious food, which we planned to gather from Star College Pretoria, one of the private schools in affluent Pretoria East.
Apart from not having the financial resources to provide this food ourselves, we thought it would be a good idea to link schools from privileged areas to those in underprivileged areas for both the sustainability of the project and social cohesion.
This is how we started our project called #TheActofGoodness.
After the first announcement at Star College Pretoria, it was the happiest day when we saw hundreds of sandwiches as well as different types of fruit brought by the parents, teachers and pupils.
I must thank the school community, which still supports this project and continues to be part of #TheActofGoodness.
After we started making presentations during our meetings with different people and sharing photos of our school visits on social media pages, one businessperson said he wanted to contribute to the project with meat and started donating half a cow every month. Volunteers started approaching us and asked if they could be a part of the project. We even had donations of school shoes and some clothes.
Even though the food was quite necessary for some students, our main purpose was improving the education level and environment. With that in mind, we asked the Outreach Foundation how it could be a part of this and started by organising an education session on bullying for the pupils. Social workers from the Outreach Foundation did a great job and later started weekly visits to students. These are continuing with the children as well as their parents.
A few weeks later, we got together with some young doctors and asked if they could contribute in any way. A general practitioner and an optometrist joined us on some of our school visits for health and eye tests.
They worked hard and selflessly, and helped many students.
It wasn’t easy to start visiting pupils, carrying and distributing hundreds of sandwiches and kilos – sometimes even hundreds of kilos – of fruit every week, no matter what. But it is amazingly fulfilling to experience the smiles on the faces of those pupils who receive the food.
It is also quite amazing to feel that one is part of a positive change and doing something for someone else without expecting anything in return.
I think Belgian author Maurice Maeterlinck was right when he said: “An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness. No reward coming after the event can compare with the sweet reward that went with it.”
We’ve recently approached some other schools and have already started spreading #TheActofGoodness in them. The number of students we are trying to help has increased to more than 2,000 from grades R to 12. Our next step is to build a homework club for those children whose parents are unable to help them with their studies.
We are also working on arranging free Saturday classes for those pupils who will be studying for the matric exams.
An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness. No reward coming after the event can compare with the sweet reward that
went with it