Community Development in Cape Town

Pastor Daniel Swartz is currently involved within community upliftment projects in the poverty areas of Cape Town - South Africa. The pastor have been involved within the community, in terms of community upliftment, for well over ten years.

Primarily the pastor works with the youth. The youngest person Pastor Daniel are currently working with is seven years old, ranging to fourteen years old. The next group he works with are many adolescents; many of whom came out of prison during their teenage lifespan. You can view them practicing for their football game in the street in the above photos.

The communities where the projects are carried out suffer from severe poverty, gangster-ism, and drugs. Cape Town is known for extremely violent gangs; the number gangs; 26, 27, and 28's. The number gangs operate to a large extend from the prison systems in place. Thus there is little cut off point for these organizations. Current upliftment programs are carried in the Ravens Mead area near Bellhar, Uitsig, and Blikkies Dorp.

Growing up in these communities makes way for many lives lost and destroyed unnecessarily. Imagine living where it has become a normality to experience, listen to, and view shoot outs in your neighborhood on a weekly basis. All the children of these communities know is what is penetrating their eyes. They do not know of a beautiful, peaceful, and abundant world.

The youth easily fall prey to gangster-ism. All they know is that the gangster has the money, the gangster has the nice clothing, the gangster has food on his table, the gangster has status and security; why not become a gangster? It is a very sad story; understood more in depth when you are a conscious citizen of Cape Town.

Should you wish to gain a little bit more insight as to how these communities live and what they experience you are welcome to view the following links, or simply Google Manenburg, Lavender Hill, Uitsig, and Cape Town's underground mafia. I can only give certain details for safety reasons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTebFI33Kz8

http://ewn.co.za/2014/11/11/Uitsig-mother-wants-he...

Pastor Gouws are working within these communities in order to rehabilitate youngsters whom are coming from prison. Alike he is working with young-lings in order show them a beautiful side of life and hopefully prevent the trap of falling to gangster-ism. Hosting of youth days acts as a brilliant source for the communities to come together and grow.

Over the years Pastor Gouws have gathered Netball teams, Football teams, and a seven's rugby team. Youth days filled with games and sports are hosted on public holidays, some weekends, and especially school holidays. One of the youth days can be seen in the photos above. For the young-lings Pastor Gouws arranges food parcels which they can enjoy after some play time. At times, due to financial stress, there aren't enough food parcels for all the young-lings and the need for improvising arises. Sometimes it can be arranged for the children to share their food parcels. At other times the cold truth needs to be conveyed to the young-ling and send them away without a food parcel or something to eat.

Another concern is the lack of hygiene in these communities. Due to severe poverty the infrastructure of these communities aren't very well developed and garbage piles are in the surrounding environment. At times the young-lings are observed playing on the garbage piles; playing with old needles, poking each other, playing with used condoms, and at times they eat from the garbage piles. Pastor Gouws wishes to complete a health and safety course in order to be in a position where he can address the youth and educate them.

These people need the basic necessities of life; a clean environment, education, sanitation products, stimulation, and Love from other human beings. We wish to aid the communities in the strive towards developing into successful, healthy humans - which would in turn act as success stories and together would return what they have learned to the community.

Many of these young-lings live in Cape Town yet they have never seen or felt the beach sand flowing through their toes. The beach is 10 - 15 min drive from where they live. At the end of each year Pastor Gouws takes the young-lings out for a day tour to experience the beach, he shows them the parliament building, and also take them to a viewing point from where they can view Robben Island. After viewing these sites Pastor Gouws provides them with a food parcel and some school clothing for the upcoming year of education.

Robben Island is a important tourist attraction and forms a large part of our cultural history. It is the place where Old President Nelson Mandela was imprisoned through the apartheid regime. Old President Nelson Mandela was on the forefront of bringing an end to apartheid in South Africa.

The original financial supporter, Mr Booly, passed away two years ago and from there on forward Pastor Gouws had to fund almost everything on his own. Pastor Gouws are currently busy with a three year electrician course, which is almost completed, with which he wishes to further engage with the youth and practice skills development. He is also practicing welding on the sideline.

Currently funding is needed for the completion of a health and safety course, transportation in order to reach into the different areas and transport the children around on the youth days, funding are also required for the food parcels, school clothing, and educational projects in the communities.

The break down is as follows;

Health and safety course: $1000

Food parcels and school clothing: $1400

Any overlapping funds will go towards transportation fees for the children.

I am looking forward to have a website set up by the end of September 2016 where this project, and others like it, can be viewed with updates. We will be as transparent as possible with all the events and the financial aspects of the project.

For any further information or queries you are welcome to contact me directly on my personal email address; [email protected]

Thank you for taking your time to view our project. We appreciate all the help that we can get.

Love and Gratitude