NEW WORLD CLASS ECD CENTRE FOR ANGELS’ CARE
Angels’ Care Centre is looking forward to creating a world class early childhood development centre at its premises in Morling Street, Howick.
After 18 months of intense planning and fundraising, work is underway to create new classrooms and other facilities for children in Grades RRR, RR and R.
Carolyn Hancock, founder of Angels’ Care, said the Covid-19 pandemic had made it very clear to the team that they didn’t have enough space at their existing premises.
“That’s when we bought the Agricultural Hall, which helped a lot,” she added. “Then about 18 months ago, the opportunity arose for us to buy the property right next door in Morling Street. This is amazing because it means we can now have a bigger campus up there and the Agricultural Hall.”
The new property will house six classrooms and will be landscaped to make it the perfect space for small children.
“We have a brilliant playground planned out, so that there are different spaces for our littlies to experience,” said Hancock. “We like our facilities to be child friendly, so the extra space is essential to allow the kiddies to run around.
“The facilities will also be improved, with larger classrooms that are purpose-built for preschool children. We want our children to have all the things that pre-school children should be experiencing, and we are creating a much larger, world class ECD centre.”
Hancock added: “Obviously, we still have our current facility and what we do there will be linked to what happens on the new site. We are planning to improve our crisis centre and healthcare offerings by renovating the existing classrooms.
“This project will definitely make a very big difference to our children and our staff and will improve the quality of the services that we offer.”
The upgrade will ensure that Angels’ Care can look after the needs of children from Grade RRR to Grade 7, as those in the preschool will feed into Thembelihle Primary School in Main Road.
“It means a large number of children will be in our care for 10 years, which is amazing,” Hancock said.
Angels’ Care will be keeping the Agricultural Hall as it is perfectly positioned for the children from the Shiyabazali informal settlement to come and collect food parcels as part of the organisation’s long-running feeding scheme, and for its other community orientated initiatives, including an after school programme.
It means that, with the purchase of the new property - which was concluded with the help of the South African Muslim Trust – Angels’ Care will own all three of its sites in the central business district.
Funding for the building project has been sourced both locally and internationally, through a nonprofit organisation in the United States.
“We have already started with the earthworks, but the real building will get underway in the next month – if it stops raining at some point,” said Hancock.
“It will probably take the better part of the next year to get the new building up, the playground done and the renovations to our current property completed.”
The construction work is being done on a probono basis, by Rob Warr, of Warr Builders, with a host of other professionals also offering their expertise for free. They include: FGG Architects in Durban, MLC Construction Cost Consultants, the Sivest Civil Engineering
Division, and Kathleen Hoult, an architect in Australia, who has helped with the concept plan.
While a lot of funding has been raised for the project, Angels’
Care would welcome donations in cash or kind for the to build the new ECD centre. Email sponsors@ angelscare.co.za for more details.