School holidays are a big deal for us. Why, you might ask? Well, because our Community Centre is a LOT of fun and if you had a week off from school, you’d want to hang out there too. Our facilitators typically organise games, activities, and movies for the kids who come to our Community Centre during school holidays, but this time we had even more to offer…

From 29 June to 3 July, we held our first ever Arts Programme that was open to all of our learners. Needless to say…it. was. AWESOME! Our very talented Arts Facilitator planned activities for each of the five days centred around building skills and experimenting with different art mediums. We used crayon resist and salt to make textured landscapes, built origami aeroplanes (and had aeroplane races, of course), made paper mache piggy banks (one of which may or may not have been used as a piñata), and sculpted figurines out of playdough. For most of our learners, this was the first time they’d ever done arts projects like this so we had a lot of fun experimenting and getting messy. Thirteen-year-old Nomfanele Mnguni said, “It makes me feel good to do art because I make what I like – I like drawing and painting.”

This was just the start of many exciting and creative activities to come but we are thrilled that this first event was so successful!