Nellmapius Preschool

Nellmapius is a poor neighborhood in the east of Pretoria. Along with the neighboring Mamelodi, it was set aside for non-white people under apartheid. The needs in these areas are huge, but there is much goodwill, capacity, and a willingness to improve their own circumstances. There are about 50 creches or in-home daycares in a 6-mile radius of the Phenyo Preschool in Nellmapius where 20-30 children may sit in front of a T.V. all day in one or two-room apartments while their mothers work, look for work or beg. There are no playgrounds or toys and caregivers typically lack the training to lay an educational foundation.

But this is where Pen’s Preschool Forum, and ASAP come in, to upgrade a preschool so it can serve as a Preschool Hub for local creches . Caregivers come to a Preschool Hub like Phenyo to receive weekly mentoring from PEN staff in early childhood education and to borrow toys from the Educational Toy Library sponsored by ASAP.

Pen has supported preschools like this for several years, but the ASAP sponsored toys have brought it to a new level. In the beginning the forum worked mainly in the inner city of Pretoria, and now outreach has spread to other areas such as Nellmapius and Mamelod.

But in order to do the work properly, the Preschool Forum needs a hub to include its own office, a room for the toy library, and space for training caregivers so they can become teachers! In Nellmapius they partnered with pastor Jacob Boshielo’s church, the Willow Manor Christian Centre, and the Phenyo Christian Centre, a preschool on the church’s property. Pen made an agreement with Phenyo and the church to use two rooms in the preschool building to establish a local hub of the Preschool Forum.

But it is strange how something like a leaking roof can become a stumbling block in an endeavor to further early child development.

Thanks to sponsorships from ASAP and to a lesser extent from Stella Street Congregation, a Dutch Reformed Church where most of the South Africa ASAP team worship, the roof could be repaired and the rooms renovated. The first phase of this work was completed July 21, 2021. Shelves, a cupboard, tables and other furniture will be installed in the next few weeks and then the educational toys will arrive.

Then the support of preschools in the area can really get going, and the educational foundation of cognitive, physical, social and emotional skills can be laid in the lives of the little children of the area. The dream is that they can build a solid education on the foundation laid, qualify for productive jobs, and lift themselves and their families out of the poverty they are in now.

As one ASAP team member commented, ”And this will all be because God brought people together - from the USA and South Africa, from different races and different languages, from different economic backgrounds - and made them channels of God’s love for the least and marginalized of society.”