A group of MBChB students in their third year at the Faculty of Health Sciences is involved in a community project as part of their community health module.
The project to which they were allocated, was the REACH project Heidedal. The project provides the children of Heidedal a safe place to stay after school. They accommodate an average of 80 children each day and each also gets a meal. The children are between 6 and 17 years old. The project also has a fairly new addition of a preschool group from Tuesdays to Thursdays between 09:00 and 13:00 where 20 preschool children are being taken care of.
"We do structural additions. We have added to the playground and planned to paint it," says Terso Combrinck, the group leader.
The students also plan to create more space for books in the library and to re-organise the books. And they also planned to add posters on various topics to create a downtown atmosphere.They further planned to continue with training in computer skills for the employees so that they then can train more children. Further investigation regarding training is also done by Childline.
Various activities were done with the children:
- 9 February 2012: A day for baking cake was arranged for the children. The kids enjoyed decorating the cookies themselves.
- 24 February 2012: Police officers of the Park Road police station visited the children to teach them about safety and drug abuse.
- 28 February 2012: A talk about safe sex for children older than 12 years.
- 9 March 2012: The group of students hold a hygiene day.
- 21 March 2012: A day after World Child Theatre Day, the drama department of the UFS, performed Cinderella for the children of Heidedal.
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