Arts & Crafts project for children, Melkhoutfontein, South Africa

Arts and craft lessons at an afterschool programme for talented children.

The project stimulates the youth to make arts/crafts to sell to the visitors of Melkhoutfontein. This community is  close to the famous flower route 4 hours east from Cape Town and can get over 100.000 visitors passing by as potential customers.

Melkhoutfontein is a small village with a very poor black community of around 2500 inhabitants. It is situated right next to Stilbaai which is a very prosperous village. 

The Dreamcatcher Foundation (DC) has been active in this area for 30 years. 
Reason for this is the amount of children that suffer from alcohol and/or drugs abuse by their parents. This can have enormous consequences for the children’s future. Many of these children miss out on chances to get a good education and create opportunities for themselves for a better future.

For this vulnerable group of children DC has set up an afterschool programme.  The elementary school is 100 meters away from  DC's home office, and after school this group of children walk from school to the home office of DC. At DC’s home office they are being helped with their homework, games are being played with them and they help in the botanical garden. They are also offered dinner because most parents cannot always offer this themselves. In the end of the afternoon the children go back to their homes. The results are promising:  we already see an improvement of their results at school.

Recently DC has started to give Arts&Crafts lessons at  the DC home office.
Diane is the art teacher. She is very experienced and teaches art in many ways using different skills and media: from painting, to fabric painting, to mosaic to mural art. Diane has extensive experience in working with children in risk and/or socio-economically challenged communities. She has an outstanding record of getting the best out of the children and finding and motivating talent. Diane is from Stillbaai and started in jan 2016. She gives one class a week. 

There are currently 13 children between the ages of 6 to 15 on the DC art project and 3 of 14 to 21 years. It is DC’s ambition to empower the youth to find work get them involved in local projects. They started the “Paint Up Kamamma project murals”. The project stimulates the youth to make art/craft and selling this to the (future ) visitors of Melkhoutfontein. The goal is to get over 100.000 visitors who pass close by their community on the very famous flower route. A part of the project focuses on training the youth – who have the interest and the skills – to become a photographer in order to take photos for the future of the artwork, crafts and murals. This a holistic and sustainable  approach contributes to empowering all these children to look a the project from a broader view, use the photos for promotion and media reporting. All this to create sustaining awareness.

Their confidence and therapy through art cannot be under-estimated. This projects provides them to see a future and live up to that with the right mindset and skills. 

How can we help?
For the art lessons the following products are on our wish list:  
• Fabric Paint - different colours
• Water and oil Paint - different shades
• Paint Brushes - from very small to large
• Scissors, pliers, palettes, easels, flip charts x 2 - those one can write on with removable pens and also use stickies or large A x 1 paper
• Art and crafting paper of different sizes and grammars
• Containers for resources
• Glue
• Mural art paint - different shades
• Mixing bowls
• Pencils, to draw and colours
• Cement mosaic tiles; Mosaic cement; Mosaic sealer
• Paint sealant
• 4 x lights (solar lighting is recommended which is energy efficient and costs nothing to run)
• Exhibition rails and equipment for Arts&Crafts exhibitions