Uta has a serious case of World Cup fever and we are suffering along with the community. The planning committee has big plans to get the entire building 100% complete by the time the World Cup is over so that we have something to celebrate once the World Cup fever clears.

In order to celebrate we will hold a performance at the hall with children dancing performances, choir singers and speakers from the community. Everyone in the committee will have a role. Azaph (a village elder) will start off the performance with a group prayer – as is custom in the village. Angie is helping to choreograph a dance performance. She has the children at her house every week for a rehearsal. We were lucky enough to attend such a rehearsal and we were so pleased to see her running a dance class at her home which can soon be done in the hall! Lucky is making plans to have a feast after the performance. The community wil have meat, pap and sauce. Ethel will make a speech describing the planning committee’s role and what they have been through to get this project off the ground and then completed.

We are so happy to finally be planning this event and we can’t wait for a blog entry in the future describing the time spent at the event! We are so close! Yay!

Shangaan word of the day: mpfula – open

It has been an exciting week so far in Manyeleti, South Africa! The Global Development Interns for ThinkImpact have arrived in Dixie, Makrepeni, and Uta. There are 12 interns this year and they will be living and working in the communities for eight weeks. The ThinkImpact staff has already recognized so much potential in this year’s South Africa GDIs in the short time since we began training in DC last week. The GDIs spent the day yesterday visiting all of ThinkImpact’s past initiatives in Manyeleti, including the high school soccer fields, primary school libraries, and community centers. Today the GDIs began using field work tools for asset-based community development (ABCD) to learn more about their communities and create a foundation for the work they will be doing over the next eight weeks. With the excitement over the World Cup reaching its peak in South Africa (only three days before the competition begins!) we are equally excited to see what the GDIs will accomplish this summer.

As the Uta Community Center nears completion, we are anticipating an exciting opening celebration and great chance for the Uta GDIs to get involved. As soon as electricity is installed, the community will be able to watch the World Cup games at the center. This will provide a safe space for fun for the whole community and a great start for the revenue-generating activity and small business involvement at the center. Women will be able to sell snacks, drinks, and other goods at the games and community members will pay a small fee for entrance. The GDIs will be completing monitoring and evaluation assessments of the community center over the next month to determine the “social return on investment” of this ThinkImpact fellowship initiative. The GDIs will also have a chance to attend the opening of the center and will be able to see the development of community programs over the next two months. This will be a great resource for the GDIs to get a first-hand experience of the successes and challenges that come with pursuing a fellowship as they complete their internship field work and begin to develop a sense of where they wish to go next. We are excited to see the advocacy projects and fellowship proposals for social businesses that come out of this year’s GDI in South Africa, and will be updating you soon on all that’s going on Dixie, Makrepeni, and Uta.

Today a loved committee member passed away. Lizzie had a smile that could brighten anyone’s day. Her laugh was infectious. Lizzie died of TB while staying in a hospital 45 minutes away in Acornhoek. She had been in the hospital for over a month when it happened. She was so strong and so alive just a few months ago. She has young children that will now grow up without her.

We got to know Lizzie when she shared some brilliant thoughts with us about what she wanted to see in her community. She was looking forward to the business opportunities that the community hall would bring. As one of our most dedicated and involved committee members, Lizzie brought such valuable ideas to our meetings and played such an important part in making the community hall possible.

As construction on the Uta Community Center comes to an end, the Project Steering Committee has been working diligently to ensure that not only will the physical structure be functional and the programs empowering for the community, but also that the building and the land will be a beautiful addition to the landscape of the village. The committee has been debating paint colors at recent meetings and looks forward to working with members of the community, especially youth, to create murals on many of the walls of the center. Over the past few weeks, we have been working with members of the committee to begin clearing the land on which the hall is built. Hoeing and raking weeds in the afternoon sun is not an easy task, but the group is committed to creating a beautiful, clean space in which to plant flowers, design pathways, and highlight the new building in their community. Today, the leaders of the Uta community are holding a meeting to invite all members of the community to help in beautifying the new center. They are asking people to volunteer their time to clean the land, plant flowers, and prepare the center for its opening. This work will all culminate in a celebration in June to welcome all residents of Uta to the new community center, honor the work of the Project Steering Committee, introducing new community programs that will fill the building, and enjoy a day of food, music, and fun. We can’t wait to update you with more pictures of construction and look forward to writing about the opening celebration at the community center in June!

Shangaan word of the day – sasekile – beautiful

Now that the community center building has totally taken shape we are excited to really get moving on the INSIDE! The committee has made big plans for programs that will run inside for fitness, education, computer and world cup screenings. Now that the committee has all of these programs planned and ready they are looking for the equipment and furnishings they will need. The Project Steering Committee has decided to divide and conquer to get what they need.

Two girls, Excellent and Ethel are making big plans for the computer room. They have been working on a business plan for an internet cafe that will provide people in Utah with computer access in their village for the first time! Excellent and Ethel will be looking for donations for anything to make this possible. They need computers, a printer, a fax, a photocopier, paper, desk, chairs. Their dedication to this project is amazing. They see huge potential for the people of Utah and for themselves. They are both very young mothers who are so intelligent and have so much to offer and this project can provide them with a job and skills they will need to further themselves. They both have had computer training so they will be able to assist the people of Utah with resumes, emails, job searches, news websites and much more! They will be writing letters and calling potential donors to gain the resources to get this idea off the ground.

Rames, a soccer and fitness enthusiast will be focusing on getting sports equipment for the hall so that soccer teams and individuals will be able to work on their fitness and wellness! He is hoping to find equipment donations from gyms. He is looking to start with free weights and simple exercise tools to get this idea moving. He wants to see people coming to the community center gym every day to lift weights and train. He knows how important fitness is for health and he wants Uta to have access to a new way to train.

Thoko is a member of the local government of Uta (the Community Development Forum). She is also a member of the Project Steering Committee and has dedicated her time to work to get those resources that will be necessary for community meetings. This means Thoko will be trying to find enough chairs, a podium and tables. She will be looking for wholesalers and donors for these.

The last initiative that the Project Steering Committee is looking towards is a projector, a screen and black out curtains! These can be used to screen World Cup soccer matches and films. This will help provide a safe place for young people to hangout and watch the games. This will also help to generate income for local women who can sell food and beverages at these events.

All of these programs are going to help give the people of Uta something they’ve never had access to and are going to generate income for the community. With these tools, anything is possible!

Today marks the two-month countdown to the 2010 FIFA World Cup here in South Africa. It would be an understatement to say that South Africans are excited. Everything in the country has revolved around soccer and preparations for the greatest competition in the sport since the host site was announced by FIFA in 2004. Things are no different here in Utah, where kids are looking forward to their four-week school break in June scheduled especially to accommodate the event and a lucky few community members have scored tickets to matches across the country.

The Project Steering Committee is hoping to make the most of the World Cup at the community hall and plans are underway to ensure that soccer-mania does not pass without taking advantage of the new facility. The committee hopes to host viewing parties for the community in the hall by setting up a big screen and projector for all of the matches. By charging a small fee for entrance to these events, the committee will be able to generate an income for maintenance and utility costs and future community initiatives at the hall. During the viewings, local entrepreneurs will have the opportunity to market and sell their goods to soccer fans, boosting their profits and developing business opportunities within the hall. Many women will be sure to make use of the building’s kitchen to sell snacks and beverages to hungry viewers.

The timing of the World Cup also brings a great opportunity for the Project Steering Committee to involve the local soccer teams in the opening of the community hall and its programmes. The PSC secretary, Rames Mndlhovu, is currently working with the three teams in Utah to develop a plan for their use of the hall. Rames hopes that the facility’s health and fitness space can provide players with a safe place to use equipment such as free weights, while also serving as a resource for health education initiatives. We hope that in the future, the teams can also make use of the meeting spaces for mentoring opportunities with local youth, taking advantage of their interest in soccer to motivate peer education and tutoring programmes within the schools and community.

With all the hype leading up to the 2010 tournament, the adverts are right: the world is watching. So are we, and we can’t wait to see what lays ahead for soccer, sport, education, health, and empowerment opportunities in the new community hall.

Shangaan word of the day – bolo – soccer

Programming begins! We are so excited to get programs running even before the community hall is up and running! The plan is to have groups and programs that can begin use of the hall the day it opens, so that means our committee has a lot of work to do to get these programs started. Each committee member is currently committed to starting one group to run inside the hall to help their community.

The most progressed of the programs is that of dramas! Two members of our committee, Angie and Lucky, have mobilized young people to participate in plays that teach of HIV/AIDS, TB, and safe sex.

The plays with older students will be performed in English, which is an exciting way for young people to further their language skills. Angie is helping children with their reading and pronunciation after school. She spends her time, for no money, to help children learn this language that will define their future. All students in Uta have to complete exams in English in order to graduate from high school. All employers require that their staff speak English, especially in a region where tourism is so vital to the economy. This extra practice is a push that the students really need.

Lucky is helping young children to practice and perform plays at a local church. These are done in Shangaan to ensure understanding. The children will learn about health issues through these plays and others will learn by watching the performances.

We can’t wait to go and watch these plays be performed once the hall opens!

Shangaan word of the day – rihanyu – health

We hope you have had a chance to check out the pictures of the progress on the community hall. Things are going well and we will post more soon. In a few weeks, members of the community will begin to assemble a fence along the property lines of the hall, in order to ensure safety and security. The Project Steering Committee is working hard on programming concepts for the hall and will begin planning meetings for creating new and expanding existing community groups in March.

One such programming aspect revolves around using computers as a resource for education and business development. Ethel Mhlongo is the Project Steering Committee member heading this initiative and her ideas and dedication are strong. Ethel is nineteen and was one of the few in her class to pass her matriculation exams at Manyangana High School in Uta in 2007. In 2008, she went bacj to school in order to try for higher grades on her exams, and she achieved them, better preparing herself for her future. Since finishing high school, Ethel has completed a number of computer training and certification courses, and plans to go to university in Johannesburg to further her studies. Ethel also has a wonderful three-year-old son to whom she is completed dedicated in addition to her future dreams. She has served as the deputy secretary for the Project Steering Committee and is on the way to creating great programming in computer education at the community hall.

Ethel sees a computer centre in the community hall as a place for members of the community of all ages to learn computer skills for the first time. She plans on finding a way for the computer centre to issue diplomas and certificates to community members to accredidate the training they receive. Computers can also be used, she believes, as tools for CV writing and job searches, increasing prospects of employment for community members. Ethel recently gathered her ideas for computer education with other community members, and has shared with the Project Steering Committee the next steps that she will take and the other women who will be involved in he programming. We look forward to their success.

Shangaan word of the day – computer – khomphyuta

This week, builders laid the concrete slab at the community centre. This marks great progress as the foundation is complete and means that the walls will quickly start to get higher and higher. Finishing the slab required a lot of materials and labour in the hot sun, providing both the Project Steering Committee and the builders with challenges–especially in regards to water.

At the community centre site sits a 5,000 liter water tank, which the Project Steering Committee has borrowed from the family of Uta’s headman. This has provided a supply of water to the construction site in the most efficient way possible in a village with no access to running water. When the communal taps near the community centre are working–for a day or two once a month–the water tank can be filled from a hose by members of the Project Steering Committee. However, construction of the centre takes much more water than these unreliable taps can provide, especially during the recent construction of the slab. The solution, for both the centre and families who can afford to pay for water, is to have a community member with a tractor or a pick-up truck drive to a nearby dam or working tap in another village with thirty or forty 20 liter containers and fill up water to deliver. This is unfortunately both expensive and inefficient, but it is the solution for now.

For some families, having clean water delivered to their homes is just not affordable. Girls are often seen before and after school and women in the hot afternoon sun pushing wheelbarrows to the dry river to dig for water or to a temporarily working tap across the village to fill up their water containers. This may or may not be safe for drinking, and almost always families live on an insufficient amount of water.

The local government is generally unresponsive to the lack of access to water. Living here for eight months, we have seen a municipality truck deliver water to select families in the community only two or three times. The ward councellor, the representative of the Bushbuckridge Municipality for this area, has guaranteed that there will be a permanent solution to the water crisis by 2012–a large dam is being built in the region with pipelines to connect water to hundreds of communities in the area currently without it. Not only does this mean at least two more years without access to water in Uta, but there is little trust among the community that this promise will be fulfilled. Short-term solutions in the area include the digging of boreholes and the repair of existing water engines and pipelines, but neither are easy tasks. This is a dry area, limiting natural water access due to insufficient rains and a lack of underground water supplies. Thus, the water crisis is both a result of current government mismanagement and a lasting effect of apartheid’s land distribution systems.

For the community centre, lack of access to reliable water means higher costs and temporary construction delays when none is available. We will be working with the Project Steering Committee to develop solutions for water at the centre–likely meaning the construction of a borehole in the future. For the community, the country, and the region, the water crisis means so much more. Almost one-fifth of the world’s population lives in areas of physical water scarcity. Almost a quarter faces economic water shortages, in which countries lack the infrastructure necessary to carry water from rivers and aquifers. That is 1.6 billion people living without sufficient access to water. Sub-Saharan Africa has the most water-stressed countries of any region. Clean water is a foundation of human health, and too many struggle to survive without it. The community centre will be a resource in Uta, eventually housing a source of community water and serving as a place where community members can meet to speak with their local leaders and elected officials, demanding the access to water they deserve.

Shangaan word of the day: mati – water

The depth of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa is at the same time palpable and hidden in the rural communities. People often die for unexplained reasons at too young of an age, and the signs and symptoms of the disease are visible even in friends and family members who refuse to acknowledge their presence. And yet those who conquer the stigma of the disease face long distances to even find a testing facility. The nearest treatment—after expensive transport and the unreliability of the country’s ARV supplies—seems unreachable. It is estimated that one in four people in Uta are HIV-positive, and there is not a single member of this community who is unaffected.

The South African government was not only slow to address the issue of HIV/AIDS, it led the way in perpetuating myths and feeding social stigma. Under political pressure in 2002, the government finally appointed a task team to address the epidemic and committed to improving the provision of antiretroviral treatment. While promise from the government is a sign of hope, it is difficult to recognize how this commitment translates into action in rural areas far out of sight from the minds of city officials. Much of the struggle against the epidemic in these areas, therefore, is committed to education and awareness. In a sad reality, testing, counseling, and treatment take a backseat.

With international recognition of the hold that HIV/AIDS has on this country, it seems now that only local commitment and action that will generate forward progress in the fight against the epidemic. As Think Impact Fellows, we have the opportunity to see this take root in rural communities. As we finalize the details of constructing a community hall, we are able to look to the future and see how this will be so much more than a physical structure. The members of the Project Steering Committee, directing the planning and development for the Uta Community Centre, see the affects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on their community, and are searching tirelessly for ways to reverse the damage and stop the spread. Excellent, Lucky, and Rames—local leaders all under the age of 25—have committed the past few months to attending community health worker courses in HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria. They envision using the hall to share what they learn with their community. There is excitement surrounding conversations of future health workshops and testing opportunities. Furthermore, Angie and Forget—a single mother and a grade 12 student—share a vision of leading learners who will gather at the community hall to watch dramas and participate in after-school activities that will among their various benefits, serve to educate kids and teens about health issues vital to their growth and success.

We are completely inspired by the people we work with here in Uta. Everyday we see the goals of the struggle against HIV/AIDS in South Africa manifested in the visions of our committee members. Each conversation and every new idea are encouragement for the success of the Uta Centre and the immense of potential in the community for future.