Indlulamithi Project held a meeting on November 3 at Sacred Heart College.
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The purpose of the meeting was to discuss a way forward on what the project wants to achieve in the community.
The project was launched on March 27.
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Indlulamithi, meaning giraffe in isiZulu, is a project that aims to develop the community, specifically Yeoville and its surrounding areas.
The project is aligned with the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA) campaign, Our City, Our Block.
Sacred Heart, the ratepayers association, SAPS and security companies, NGOs, religious institutions, property developers and community members have come together and formed Indlulamithi because they want their community to be safe.
“This project is not a Sacred Heart project but a community project. Because of the work we do in the community and the relationships we have with schools in the area, we all had a concern on how to make the community safe for our children,” said Collin Northmore, head of Sacred Heart College.
“Parents and teachers are frustrated with the lack of resources and are afraid for the security of the children in their care. We wanted to find ways to make our areas safe and also share resources. Most importantly we want to develop our children,” said Northmore.
This project will have four schools sharing resources like libraries, science laboratories and research centres.
Learners from both government and private schools will have access to high-quality learning and facilities.
The four schools from the area that are part of the project are Yeoville Boys, United Church School, Observatory Girls and Sacred Heart College.
These four schools all have different things to offer to the project, but, most importantly, they want to share the resources for the benefits of the learners.
Northmore stressed the importance of the community involvement because that will encourage everyone to be responsible about looking after the resources that will be installed in the area.
Indlulamithi is an afternoon project.
The four schools will share resources with each other to bridge the gaps that learners don’t get during school hours.
Some of the areas the project will focus on will be sports, digital, arts, maths and science.
“It’s important to look at all the different aspects of a child’s development. The project wants to develop the child in different areas.
“When children can tap into the digital world through robotics and making them understand how it’s built, you excite them and they find out what they are strong in. If you capture their minds when they are still young, it encourages them to explore and find what they love, making it easy for them to know which path to follow,” said Northmore.
There are plans underway to build concrete giraffes along popular walking routes which will house surveillance cameras, serve as Wi-Fi hotspots and display art from the children in the area.
Safe walking paths will be created in the area for the children to walk to and from schools and to play areas.
An incident-reporting app has also been created where learners can pinpoint where they experience any criminal activities.
The aim of the app is to increase police visibility in those areas and also assist the police in identifying problematic areas.
