February 2019
The month of February unlike other months is a month of love as people celebrate Valentine's Day throughout the world. The ICDM took up on an initiative with a local music group 501 and planned an event. In this very month we welcomed Nicklas from German who comes from a background of investment banking and is here to spend two good years with ICDM. The project of keeping our area clean began as we started a good litter system working with the school, thousand thrills and the local community. Our after school programs are also on fire as we see an increase in attendance. The ICDM also filmed a 15 minutes documentary with a group of students from A university in Bielefeld, Germany. It was also in the month of February that the ICDM met with the EThekwini municipality's youth desk through our all time partners, the department of sports and recreation.
The event held on the 16th of February was bigger than what we anticipated. There art performances, ranging from Poetry, hip-hop/Rap music, Maskandi and Sarafina. It was a good platform for all the local artists as they found a chance to make themselves known to the local people and thereby creating a good local support base.
It wasn't only people from Isithumba that performed on the day but from neighboring villages and excitingly we had Tomas the Brazilian multi talented dude performing on the day, doing beatboxing. This was also a platform where our talented ICDM kids could showcase skills in dances like Sarafina and more. More notable is that the event went accordingly and there were no incidents of misbehaviour and that has become to be the ICDM events culture since we strictly forbid alcohol and or any other drug in our events as they seek to inspire and develop the youth people. This event like many others will become an annual event of ICDM.
Nickolas has been assigned to managing the litter program and of course he will be working with the ICDM team and the local authorities, the aim is to create a clean space where kids can learn and grow. This is one of the initiatives where we as local people need to support the government where possible in bettering our own areas. The primary school Indunakazi is very cooperative under the administration of Ms Mncwabe and her good team. Working with Mr Zondi is very fruitful and helps make things move forward quicker, Mr Zondi is responsible for litter collection on the area. Slowly we start to see the change of attitude where people start to be more responsible and of course this will take time and persistence in the idea. What is great and notable for ICDM is that the children respect this initiative and seem to grow a lot from it.
Our after school programs are really growing such that it is hard to ignore the role played by ICDM in the local community of Kwaximba. The children start to communicate in English with our international volunteers and we have been lucky to meet Mboneni Ngcobo who is introducing a mountain bike program which we shall write more about in our next newsletter. In Chess and table tennis we have also helped the youth improve. There is always continuous posts on our Facebook page where one can see what it is that we do on a weekly basis.
The ICDM had a pleasure to welcome students from a university in Bielefeld. The aim of ICDM's involvement in the film was to film a 15 minutes documentary promoting volunteer tourism, meaning showing what one can do in Isithumba as a volunteer and what other activities are there to keep people entertained while we generate income so we can run the programs. The documentary went well such that the film crew was as happy as the ICDM was after the project was completed, however, we are awaiting the editing of the documentary and after we shall post it on our platforms to all relevant stakeholders.
Meeting with the structures of the municipality reminded us that we have their support and that they value our work hence we want to say that we have been and encouraged to do more. This is all thanks to Zola and her team at the department of sports and recreation of EThekwini.
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