Projects

Literacy

Our literacy component involves the setting up of a reading centre in a school in order to facilitate reading support with grade two and three learners at least twice a week during school hours.  We have adopted the Shine model to accomplish this and remain partnered with them as they continue to train us up to implement this in more schools.   The Shine Centre (www.theshinecentre.org.za) have seen a 33% increase in literacy levels over 8 years in Observatory Primary School using this model.

Numeracy

Our numeracy program facilitates the grasp of number concept. We have a hero of a volunteer who specialilses in remedial teaching but volunteers her time twice a week to work with the grade one's and two's. Numbers become associated with fun and games, as the numeracy sessions are always interactive. 

Counselling

Our Counselling Component is the fastest growing service that LMF provides. The reason is simply that we are responding to the great need present in the impoverished communities in which we serve. We have also made the link that traumatised/abused/behaviourally dysfunctional children will not cope with the expecations placed on them in terms of performance outcomes at school if these issues are not being properly addressed.

Counselling is happening in three of our schools at the moment, both on an individual and a group level.  The counsellors have lots of fun being creative in the way that they counsel with the use of play therapy techniques – this might include moulding clay, scenes in a sand tray, puppets, drawing and much more. We have also just introduced training to our cousnelling volunteers to exapnd their skill set. Our counsellors are currently seeing up to 30 learners in just one of our underprivileged schools.

Lifeskills

Our lifeskills component consists of class time given to us by the school, as well as spiritual development which certain schools request. This is usually fun and interactive to build relationship with the learners and covers all sorts of topics requested by the learners or teachers. On any given day you could find the class learning through singing, groups huddled in discussion around a particular topic or lessons being learnt through role play. Our spiritual development component involves break-time clubs and discipleship groups. We have seen that learners benefit greatly from the interaction, wisdom and fun way of learning that they experience in doing lifeskills.

Nutrition

Nutrition is our newest area of service , and one that we hope to grow into the future because of evidence that shows that children cannot learn if they are hungry. What we’ve seen is that there are many learners coming to school without having eaten anything for supper the night before – according to one of our schools, 700 out of their 800 learners need bread and fruit and would all take a meal from the feeding scheme if they could. Through bringing their stories to our community, we been able to facilitate heroes in our community provide bread and fruit weekly to supplement the feeding scheme that is currently in place at the school.

Visual Motor Integration

Visual Motor Integration is a fun programme that involves learning essential skills for reading, writing and maths. The children love it and don't see it as work! It comprises of physical exercises and includes activities such as jumping over ropes, walking on balance beams and catching bean bags while jumping on a small trampoline. A visual motor integration class is full of noise and laughter and lots of jumping around – there is always need for more volunteers. This also happens once a week with the foundation phase learners. 

Homework Club

The homework club is a place where primary schools learners can come and complete their homework and receive tutoring in areas of difficulty made possible by our willing and creatively able volunteers. If you were to visit Homework Club on any given day you might see learners practicing for orals, grade fours learning their spelling words and grade sixes (as well as their tutors:) getting their minds around some very complicated maths problems.

Please see Opportunities for information about how you can be involved - no training or experience required, except for our counsellors.