We welcome volunteers and interns to experience our programmes.  Classes take place Mondays to Thursdays from 15:00 to 17:00 and certain outreach programmes take place on Saturday mornings.  We do not run our normal programmes during school holidays (27 March – 11 April, 10 June – 12 July, 24 September – 3 October) and our programmes close as from 10 December until end January.  We do run holiday programmes and camps during the school holidays.

With a core staff of nineteen, the Amy Biehl Foundation administers various programmes under the umbrella of ‘Education’ as follows:

After School Care Programmes

The Foundation currently sponsors four after school care programmes, one each at the Nomlinganiselo and Qingqa schools, each hosting over 200 students per day. The programmes run Monday to Thursday, and a nutritious meal is offered daily to each child. Students are educated in life-skills, drama, dance, art & culture, literacy, and numeracy.

Creative Arts

The creative arts programme strives to create a new order of artistic excellence by providing a climate that rewards artistic talent through exploration and development of the children’s latent talent. The programme teaches painting, beading, pottery, drama and dance which includes ballet, traditional, modern and Kwaito.

Partnerships include:

Zama Dance School & UCT Ballet

40 children attend ballet classes each week.

No Boundaries Arts Exchange

The ‘No Boundaries: An Arts Exchange’ is a programme that seeks to help students take advantage of available resources to deepen their characters and develop their visions for their individual lives as well as the broader society. The exchange uses arts activities that the students are already involved in and adds a more purpose driven structure, which is propelled by an internet exchange with students doing similar arts projects in California. The exchange gives the students’ art projects a structure that encourages goal-setting and the conscious development of values, such as reliability, group skills, and self-reflection.

Sports Development

The sports development programme provides a safe and supportive environment for children to experience the physical and mental challenges associated with sport. Coached by enthusiastic Foundation staff members, the sports programme provides an opportunity for local youth to develop their skills and to channel their energies into healthy and constructive activities. Currently, over 150 students per week are trained in soccer, netball and field hockey.  Hockey partnerships include:

Northern Irish Lurgan Ladies Hockey Club Partnership

Since 2006 the Lurgan Ladies Hockey Club from Northern Ireland in conjunction with Jenkinson Consulting has been coming to South Africa each year for a week-long hockey and soccer skills academy, working with children from the townships who are part of the Foundation’s Sports Programme.

In 2008, through a tremendous fundraising effort 16 young girls from the Lurgan Ladies Hockey Club raised enough money to travel to South Africa for the hockey skills academy and to work with a select group of girls from our programme. Furthermore, 16 girls from our programme have been given the opportunity of a lifetime to travel to Northern Ireland for more training, thanks to the fundraising efforts of the Lurgan Ladies Junior Hockey Club and Jenkinson Consulting.

In August 2009, Eric Jenkinson and his team of coaches once again returned to Cape Town for a week of hockey and soccer skills training. Another wonderful experience and everyone is looking forward to welcoming our friends from Northern Ireland back in 2010.

HV HIC Partnership

We are proud to announce that another hockey partnership with HV HIC, from Amstelveen, The Netherlands and more in specific the first women’s team has been formed and they will be conducting some hockey training sessions with our children from 4 – 13 February 2010.  Our hockey teams are really excelling with the support of our various partners and we are grateful to everyone for their time and support. www.HIChockey.nl

Other partnerships include:  Weekly swimming lessons with SA Swimming and UWC and more below.

Dragon Power  Martial Arts & Fitness Centre

Every Saturday, 15 children gets Muaythai (kickboxing) lessons at the Dragon Power Martial Arts & Fitness Centre.

Grassboots Soccer

Every Saturday we take 15 children to Grassboots Soccer for coaching.

Khayelitsha Golf Driving Range (KGDR)

The Khayelitsha Golf Driving Range was founded by the Amy Biehl Foundation in 2001 after it was discovered that there were many talented young golfers in the townships but few opportunities for them to learn the game. The motivation to establish the range came from local golfers who saw golf as means of providing children with core values for life, such as integrity, respect and proper etiquette.

The purpose of the Driving Range is to establish a positive community hub offering meaningful, contemporary programmes and facilities that help to uplift the under-developed and under-resourced communities of Khayelitsha and Mitchell’s Plain. In this way, the Driving Range aims to provide attractive alternatives that counteract the debilitating effects of poverty, gangsterism and other anti-social behaviour.

A clubhouse has recently been completed which provides another opportunity to draw children into a healthy environment after-school and on the weekends.

Music

Our Music programme includes instruction in theory and practice in brass, choir, guitar, Marimbas, recorders and violin.  These students would never have been given this opportunity without the assistance of the Amy Biehl Foundation. The programme has partnered with the UCT School of Music,  Artscape, Cape Philharmonic, Bishops Diocesan College, Hugo Lambrecht Music Centre for music teachers and instruments.  The Foundation seeks to expand the programme to local high schools to ensure that students are able to continue their music education.

Partnerships include:

Bishops School, Hugo Lambrecht Music Centre, Cape Philharmonic

The Amy Biehl Foundation has established a working relationship between township schools and the Bishops School in Rondebosch, the Hugo Lambrecht Music Centre and Cape Philharmonic. On a weekly basis, students from schools in the township are transported to these music schools for guitar and violin lessons, as well as training in brass and string instruments. To date, the programmes have involved more than 50 students from the townships who otherwise would not have been given the opportunity to play a musical instrument.

HIV/AIDS Peer Education

This programme educates students in the townships about the dangers and causes of HIV/AIDS through peer education. Peer educators are secondary school students who meet weekly for training with Amy Biehl Foundation program coordinators. Areas of instruction include, but are not limited to, HIV/AIDS, substance abuse, sexuality, adolescent development and dating. To date, over 100 students have been trained as peer educators, and they have gone on to teach, counsel and advise countless other primary school students. Additionally, our staff members have led numerous AIDS awareness workshops in junior and primary schools. The peer educators are positive role models who stress abstinence and the importance of living a substance-free lifestyle. Programmes such as this are especially important when put in perspective, South Africa is in the midst of an AIDS epidemic and the youth need to be educated and warned about AIDS so that they do not contract the deadly virus that too many of our fellow countrymen and women have.

Greening and Environmental

This programme works to improve the external landscape of participating schools by planting trees, flowers and vegetable gardens at participating schools. The benefits are not only a beautified school, but also students with a greater sense of school pride, and respect for the environment. The programme also develops school based environmental education programmes, which have been implemented in 6 schools and are listed in Appendix 2. With the help of the community, the greening programme has changed the attitudes and perceptions of what a township school should look like. To date over 1,000 students have attended workshops on topics such as the cultivation of plants, the effects of global warming, the benefits of recycling and the dangers of pollution. We have worked with Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens and the University of the Western Cape in the past, and both organisations have been generous in supplying trees, flowers, and volunteers to assist us with landscaping.

Youth Reading Role Models

Youth Reading Role Models Established in 1998, the Youth Reading Role Models reaches more students than any of our other programmes. This year-long programme runs during the school day in 22 primary schools, giving Grade 7 students the opportunity to read aloud to Grade 1 students. Grade 7 students improve their reading comprehension and public speaking skills, while Grade 1 students benefit from exposure to positive role models who support them in their education. Additionally, parental involvement in the programme has proven to be a success not just for the students but also for the parents. Unemployed parents come into Grade 1 classrooms on a weekly basis to read to the students. Parents have reported that the reading program has boosted their confidence level and has helped them to find employment. Another success of the programme is the famous South African personalities that have volunteered to be guest readers. Past guest readers include the Speaker of Parliament Ms. Baleka Mbete, Pick ‘n Pay Director Wendy Ackerman, and Minister of Education Cameron Dugmore. Every year, we look forward to having numerous other high-profile role models volunteer as guest readers for this programme.

Computer Literacy

Thanks to a donation of 35 laptops from Close The Gap, we have launched a computer literacy programme. The programme will move from school to school and each group (20 students) will have two weeks of fulltime classes to familiarize themselves with basic computer skills and Microsoft Word. In this way, the programme can reach out to many students and various schools.

Filming / Movie making

Oliver Kuene, a volunteer from Germany, is working with a group of children through 2010 teaching them all about the art of making movies!

Interns and Volunteers

The Amy Biehl Foundation receives numerous applications/requests to assist the Foundation, and utilizes the skills and talents of a number of interns and volunteers from foreign universities and the local community. These individuals, who come from diverse cultures such as the United States, Austria, Germany and Holland, bring a wealth of skills and abilities to the Foundation, helping it to run in a more effective manner. Interns have produced the original website, an intern guide for future interns based upon their experiences, helped to organize fundraisers and written grant proposals and business plans. Interns are also involved in the day to day implementation of our programmes, and tutor, teach and coach at the after school care centres.

Facilitator of Partnerships

Due to the success of our programmes over the last decade, and our ongoing mission to continue the reconciliation process between South Africa’s privileged and less privileged citizens, the Foundation is seen as an organisation that can build partnerships with a wide range of other organisations and individuals. We receive at least 2 USA University groups a month that send students to us to learn about forgiveness, reconciliation and restorative justice and then they experience our programmes either for an afternoon or a day, learn about township life etc etc. In the past few months we have had Milton Academy, Eastern Illinois University, Standford, Umass, University of Washington, Marwuettel, Mischigan State University, Augusta State University, Semester at Sea and many more.