Drop-In Center

Nothing really noteworthy has happened since the last time I posted, but I feel like if I don't keep posting every few days, the notability requirement for posting will climb to precipitous heights.

I have spent the last week going in to the office and hanging out there, drinking tea, reading, and doing a very little bit of work. As I membentioned in my last post, on Monday I got to go for the first time to see one of the community projects my NGO works with, an OVC drop-in center. OVC stands for orphans and vulnerable children, many of whom become OVCs due to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Here, orphan is defined differently than from in the US; orphans have at least one dead parent, not necessarily two. Because family networks are so large and strong in South Africa, most orphans still live with family members, though often the OVCs that use the drop-in centers are from poorer families and need the support of the center to give the OVC a safe, supervised, and stable environment for a few hours.

Drop-in centers are similar to afterschool programs. Usually, children under 18 come there before and after school to do their homework and play, though none of the drop-in centers here are as organized in terms of scheduled activities as the afterschool programs I went to as a child. The most important function of the drop-in centers is that they provide a meal to children who might not otherwise get one at home. For some drop-in centers, this is a difficult enough task that they have no resources to organize something more ambitious.

I only got to visit the drop-in center my organization works with for about half an hour. It took me so long to get there (two taxis) that they were winding down for the day by the time I got there. Still, I'm glad that I got to meet the staff and see the kids, although there wasn't as much interaction as I would have liked. Most of the students that I saw seemed to be at the older end of the scale, teenagers rather than small children, which is nice since I see so many little kids at the creches (like preschools) my NGO works with. I have been to a lot of creches in the past month. Little kids can be very uplifting to be around, but at the same time, the fact that my NGO is so involved in early childhood development--something I have basically no interest or experience in--can have a dampening effect on my enthusiasm. So, it goes up and down.