The Thanda Story

 

 

Hi, my name is Angela Larkan. In 2006 I founded Thanda and in 2008 I launched Thanda After-School with Tyler Howard and some wonderful colleagues such as Maya Casagrande, Jon Leland, and Holly Buchanan. After requests to hear ‘our story’, this post will be the first of a series where we’ll take a trip down memory lane and then follow up with some news from the ground. I’ll also use excerpts from letters I wrote home to show you how we got to where we are today.

Ang and Tyler in front of the newly built Thanda Library and Community Center, 2011.

Eight years ago I was sitting in my college dorm room, procrastinating, when I came across an online article about AIDS in South  Africa. It warned of the millions of children that would be left orphaned by the disease after 2010. Having grown up in South Africa, I knew the country could not handle so many orphans. So, I applied for a grant to go to South Africa to see what solutions were being developed and where investment should be placed.

As soon as I was in those communities, seeing large groups of young children running around by themselves, empty huts with four grave stones in the yard, grannies raising their children’s children, and learning that there could be more than 5 million orphans by 2015, I knew that I had to work to find solutions for this crisis. I did years of research during and after college, developing a model that uses existing school buildings, works alongside local teachers, and hires unemployed youth from the community to support orphans and vulnerable children through after-school programs.

 

This is how we could handle large numbers of orphans, I thought. This is how South Africa could approach its impending orphan crisis.

 

Running a 3-week program for children in Zululand in 2005.

Soon after this, some dedicated friends and I started raising money. Then, in 2008, Tyler and I moved to South Africa with eight volunteers to start Thanda After-School. Within three weeks of being in South Africa, the ten of us and our newly recruited local staff got Thanda After-School up and running and ready to care for 240 children every day. It was a crazy time of enthusiasm, ideas, stress, energy, and difficulties.

Developing programs and curriculum for Thanda After-School

 

“Well, we are now one and a half weeks through the program and still surviving! It is amazing! I had a moment to stop spinning the other day when I went to the soccer field, and the reality caught up to me there. Beautiful rolling hills dotted with huts and slews of problems. Incessant hunger, a generation lost to AIDS, and little hope for employment. Yet 160 kids were running their hearts out, screaming and shouting after the ball, so excited to be part of a team for those few hours. Then we headed back to the site. Teams of students in their red Thanda After-School t-shirts were walking back with balls, artwork, and cardboard laptops, chatting about their afternoons. They had an energy that I hope will survive.”

Happy to be in Thanda

 

Holly helps a Thanda student with homework

 

Seven months later I wrote home…

“Living and working in Africa is like being on an emotional and physical roller coaster that never stops. Each day is filled with problems — some immediate, some from 100 years ago — and then there are moments of extreme happiness. Life is raw and undiluted, and it is our job to support our students as they deal with whatever poverty is dealing that day.

 And so things always go wrong. Something breaks. People get sick. There are floods. Children become orphans. Yesterday one of our youngest students tells us there is no more food at home for the family of 14. These are the stresses that fill our days and cause us to work late into the evenings, because they are immediate and because they are life-threatening.

Then are frustrating moments. When I take a granny and her 7 orphaned grandchildren to get ID documents and social welfare grants. And we wait in lines all day, going from one department office the other, only to be told that the (disabled) grandmother must go to the city offices instead.   

  

There are emotional moments. When my heart tightens and tears pour down my cheeks. On Sunday our under-13 Thanda soccer team competed in a tournament of 24 teams. When they made it to the final, I cried as I watched them standing in front of the crowd of 500 people, with their hands on their hearts and their heads down, singing the national anthem. They looked so grown up, so serious and proud. With no cleats and wearing make-shift uniforms many sizes too big, this was the biggest achievement of their lives.

The best moments are what we now call ‘Thanda moments’. These are precious moments when we realize that we are helping, that we are part of something so incredibly important. When we go up to the basketball court unannounced one Saturday with one ball and soon there are 80 children from all over the community, asking if they can play with Thanda.”

Getting stuck in the mud

 

Thanda August 2011

It has been a long journey, but when I get a chance to look back and see what we have accomplished in three-and-a-half years, I am proud of what we have achieved. A few weeks ago Tyler and Sbusiso ‘Raah’ Msimango (Thanda’s manager) boarded a plane to present at the 2011 National Association of Child Care Workers conference. I couldn’t believe that in so little time we had taken an idea and turned it into reality.

 

Don Mattera, patron of NACCW, makes the opening speech

At the conference, they urged others to consider using schools as a support structure for children in the afternoons. They told people about using creative activities and tools to bring learning, comfort, and support to children growing up alone. And they spoke not about theories, but from experience.

Thanda staff training at Noah

Over the last four months Thanda After-School staff have designed and implemented daily training sessions for a neighboring organization called Noah. They recruited 18 volunteers from the local community and taught them how to provide educational and emotional support to over 300 more children after-school. It has been fun!

Twin teaches gardening to new recruits

 

Thank you for reading and supporting Thanda!

 

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