THE play area and garden around Golden Hours Special Needs School in Durban North is a space transformed thanks to the hard work of volunteers, community members and especially two Danville Park Girls’ High School learners, Jessica Bartle and Sahara Thornell.

The duo, who are attempting to obtain their Gold certificate through the President’s Award for Youth Empowerment, which is the South African version of The Duke of Edinburgh International Award, were joined by Liam Bromley from Curro Salt Rock.

Over the course of a week, the community came together to transform the play area, including painting a new mural complete with the handprints of those involved, repainting the jungle gym, repairing the trampoline, and fixing the garden and the obstacle course.

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One of the volunteers also helped fix and paint the toilet doors in the learners’ bathrooms.

“My favourite part of this project was the mural because it really embodied the spirit of everyone’s collective will. I’m so proud of everything we achieved and I’m grateful to everyone who contributed. My mom, Georgina, and Liam’s mom, Adele, were also instrumental in helping us get this project completed,” Sahara said. “I volunteer at the school, teaching the learners ball skills and during that time I realised how it would impact the lives of the learners if we transformed the play area.”

For fellow learner, Jessica, the feelings were similar.

“I didn’t expect anyone to show up and we had close to 20 people every day for the week-long project. We had learners from Danville, Durban North College and Curro Salt Rock also chip in which was fantastic,” she said. “One of the aims of this upliftment project was to improve the play area for the precious special-needs children and we achieved that,” she said.

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Fellow resident and volunteer throughout the project, Liam, said he was proud of what they achieved with the project.

“I’m proud of what we’ve done, especially bringing the community together. To see people connect and do good out of the kindness of their hearts is awesome,” he said.

The volunteers were also joined by the principal of Golden Hours School, Rodney Dladla.

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