QQ Creche Project Background

(Bahle wearing ladies out fit during the funny day of QQ community creche)

QQ community creche is a community based project and is owned by the residents of QQ, the idea of the project come after the community executive committee realized that people at the community were getting impatient on their long term struggle towards decent housing and service delivery, as the community does not have a single toilet and electricity. Currently there are only 8 working taps for more than 3000 people that are living at QQ.

(Funny day pictures)



The community executive committee realized that there could be other practical ways of mobilizing people again, to ensure that the struggle towards decent housing and service delivery is sustainable in the community, and they come up with number of project which can be done by the community, some of the project that were suggested includes, soup kitchen, youth project, woman's project and the creche project.

During consultation time with the community and endless discussions the decision was made and most people preferred the creche project, and there were lot of questions that were not answered about this idea of the creche

(funny day picture)

The main idea behind the creche was in line with community mobilization and participation, and also to continue organizing outside the system or to do thing independently.
Most creches are individually owned and are profit base, the idea with this creche first was to break that down and to say this project must be 100% community based and on building it every body must play vital role.
At this stage we didn't have any building and there was no open space as well at a community to build the structure which will be used as a creche,
Few options were available, the first one was to buy a shack that was on sale for R3000, the second one was to use a building of the Church which is situated at the community and pay rent as the church is not community owned.
After number of discussion we manage to maneuver within the community and a piece of land was made available, after the space was available it was agreed that each house must pay R5 donation towards building the structure and it was agreed that everybody must contribute whether a person does have a child or not as the building will also be used as a community hall as well. That was the first unifying thing to every body at the community as a results of that 78% people donated towards building the creche.
Other people donated not only with R5 but with other things as well such as building materials, and others invested their time on building the creche, the youth couldn't donate as most of them are unemployed and are still attending school but also they didn't want to be left out side the initiative they also invested time on building the creche and cleaning the building as well.

(funny day picture)

The other huge challenge during consultation or negotiation process was the issue of fees and the ages that the creche need to take, regard with the issue of fees we wanted to ensure that the creche should not make profit at all and we wanted to make sure that every will be able to afford the fees whether a person is employed or not and we wanted to ensure that those that can not afford the fees at all are not left behind as well.
As much as the aim of the creche is not to accept any form of assistance from government, but also we didn't want children to suffer in the process, and we wanted to ensure that they are looked after properly and they get proper meal not bread and water, because of that we had to compare fees with local creches and what we find out from local creche children under the age of 6months they pay more than R300 and under the age of 2years they pay between R150 to R250 and from 2 and above they pay from R100 to R150 per month, because of the minimum space that we have it was agreed later agreed that we must take children from the age of 2 years till the age of 5 years and the fees will be R50 per child.

The creche started operating at the first week of August 2008 with 29 children and the aim was to take up to 30 children, at the beginning of September the number had increased to 40 and we had to stop taking at that number, currently the number is still 40.

The creche is runned by 4 volunteers, and the special committee was elected to run and manage the creche and they are working close with the volunteers, they are responsible for managing the finance, to give support to volunteer and manage any child related activities that the community is doing. They need to report to community executive committee about any development then after that both committees need to call general meeting and account to the community, the community is a highest decision making body regard to this project, vital decision are not taken at a leadership level but at a community level, suggestions may be made at a leadership level but not decision.
At the end of September in the meeting with parents it was agreed that the fees must be reduced to R40 and parents will at least volunteer 8 hours per month, those who can not due to their tight program they can send any person to do voluntary work on their behalf or they'll continue paying R50.

If you would like to learn more about this project or you want to spend time volunteering please contact the children executive committee at: 076 875 9533 Mr. Qona
073 850 0741 Jackson
or the community executive commitee at: abmwesterncape@bahlali.org / 073 2562 036