Archbishop Holgate’s Community Work in Cape Town

Year 10 students from Archbishop Holgate’s School recently returned from another successful expedition to South Africa. For over a decade, there have been links between this Church of England school with churches and community projects in the Anglican Diocese of Cape Town; this recent visit being the sixth one undertaken by students in Year 10 during their work experience fortnight. Over the years, sixty students have had the opportunity to engage in a visit that blends tourism with engagement with local people and participation, in a variety of charitable projects. As a result of the relationships formed, the school has been fortunate to be visited by a variety of people from the Diocese of Cape Town. This has included a student football team, three bishops from the diocese, a group of youth workers and two student exchanges. The school was also honoured by a visit by Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu in November 2012. The group who visited this April also got to meet Archbishop Tutu at Cape Town cathedral.

This year, the students took eleven extra suitcases full of donated items, in addition to the large amount of things in their own luggage. This included over 300 World Book Day books, over 40 pairs of football boots, three sets of team strips, many blankets and other knitted items donated by the Unravel craft group from St Paul’s Church, handmade dresses created by Archbishop Holgate’s textiles students, 30 hand knitted teddy bears and a huge amount of second-hand clothes for babies and children. These were donated to a variety of groups from township football teams, to an AIDS orphanage, a homelessness project, a maternity hospital, a foster home and support groups for HIV sufferers. It is estimated that the group took over 250KG of donated items in the additional cases and in their own luggage.

As well as engaging in tourism activities, the students spent several days working with community projects that the school has partnered with over many years. At the Fikelela Children’s Centre, an AIDS orphanage in Khayelitsha township, students spent a day creating a new play area. This involved clearing and levelling a large area of scrub land, unloading and spreading compost, followed by laying rolls of turf. Later, they weeded the neglected vegetable garden and played with the children. A few days later, a climbing frame was delivered for the play area. This, and the compost and turf, were paid for by fundraising that the Archbishop Holgate’s students had undertaken here in York. At an overcrowded primary school in another township, the students spent a day acting as classroom assistants and in some cases deputised for missing teachers. At a local secondary school, they spent a day working with a group of special needs students, and later participated in a feeding programme in a particularly impoverished informal settlement. At St George’s Home for Girls, the group planted a vegetable garden, did lots of weeding, repainted the entrance and interacted with the girls. At a large community centre and pre-school outside Cape Town, the group cleared the entire site of several sacks of litter and assisted workmen in creating a new fenced play area for the crèche. This involved getting stuck into some quite heavy manual labour, which greatly impressed the staff at the centre.

School Chaplain, Richard Nihill, said that “it is a real blessing to be involved in this link with the Diocese of Cape Town. We always receive a warm welcome and wonderful hospitality when we visit. It is also amazing to see the emotional and spiritual journey our young people undertake; many of them do comeback transformed. In the past we have had students decide to study international politics and childcare following their visits. One student even switched from a career in acting to instead studying medicine having been so moved by what she experienced”.