Social Action Project - Growing together 🌳🤝✨

"It takes a village to raise a child."

This phrase has not proved itself truer than in this instance.

A collaborative Social Action Project has many challenges, one of which is time, convenience, availability, consistency and ESTABLISHMENT (with public knowledge).

The chosen NPO for this project seemed keen to commit at the beginning, but when the clock stuck 12, the princess was nowhere to be found - they pulled-out. This made the experience unpleasant, and more of a learning curb than a successful collaboration between school and community-based NPO, in an attempt to combat food insecurity, particularly in poverty-stricken areas, such as one surrounding the school.

The NPO failed to approach the matter with the necessary urgency. As a 21st century teacher, I could not let this slide, especially since many of my learners (those in my class and others whom I became acquainted with) face the challenge of food insecurity. I buckled-down and exercised creativity by involving my grade 3 learners, their parents and my mentor teacher in a 3 day food security and sustainable living project - all plant centred.

This challenge included 3 different activities for each day, 1 of which was a Google forms that had to be completed by the parents, through which they discussed their views on the skills required to exercise sustainable living. A reward was given to the learner who completed the 3-day challenge well, alongside their parent/ parents. 🍃🪴🍃

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ8zjinQb28

The collaborative efforts between teachers, parents and the learners was inspiring and definitely made the effort and attempt to urgently address the matter, worth while. 🔆

Together we grew and overcame.

Oh!

This project was inspired by an incident whereby I witnessed one learner bully another, because he/she did not have lunch. This immediately brought tears to my eyes. It was in that moment that I realised that addressing hunger as a part of a greater social issue, had more to it than just the tummy - both social and emotional issues had to be dealt with, while dealing with the tummy.

This Social Action Project is based on the philosophical principle of doing things for the greater good, Humanitarianism and the schematic and theoretical knowledge expressed by Maslow in his hierarchy of needs, which briefly explains models and depicts the levels of deficiency and biological needs that needs to be met in order for a learner to exercise and reach his/her full potential. The teacher plays the role of a carer, acting within the confines of the care-based theory, which involves listening, speaking, monitoring and aiding the learner by attending to the specific needs thereof.

and finally, dealing with negative attitudes and mindsets pertaining to self, which is influenced by the internal and external surroundings, placed myself, as a teacher-in-training as the sower, who had uproot weeds of "I can't" and plant and nourish seeds of "I can".

A teacher, a sower.