Education is the royal road out of poverty, provided it is part of a more comprehensive support structure for rural children. POP aims to prevent school drop outs by covering the First Thousand Days (FTD) and preparing children for school. Getting children into school and helping them stay in school until they reach their full potential is the next challenge.

• Starting before birth we do parenting training with exercise, education and counselling for pregnant mothers.
• Early Childhood education – babies from 4 months  to  Grade R (0-6) at two ECD centres
• After-school support – homework supervision, library, computers. (7-18)
• Leadership training; preparation for work or tertiary education. (18-25)
• Access to Adult Education

Health

Goedgedacht offers the following services:

• Identification of developmental deficits in small children at ECD centres
• Maternal malnutrition (pregnant mothers)
• Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder prevention programme
• Nutritious meals provided for all POP children after school each day
• Provision of toiletries to teenagers which prevent dropping out of high school
• Daily hygiene routine established at POP centres
• Regular sports programme at Centres

Linking communities with government health programmes

Our aim is to build resilient and confident young people with strong values and sound self-esteem, we achieve this by running the following activities:

• We run age appropriate youth groups which enable young people to explore personal their own identity, by learning life skills, creative arts and sports programmes
• We involve young people in community services projects
• During school holidays we run a series of holiday programmes that help to broaden their horizons and provide a variety of experiences.
• Our most successful and effective programme is the Goedgedacht Rural Leadership Academy where 18 – 25 year old men and women are prepared for adulthood, work, tertiary education and most importantly for leadership in their own communities. Our leadership training is based on the concepts of Servant Leadership.
• We also run a workshops for adults covering a variety of relevant topics and at our open days we share information and engage in dialogues with the community for the sake of mutual learning.

The Trust works to tie environmental issues in with its programmes. We have great concern for this part of our country that is heating more rapidly and becoming drier than any other part. Poverty among rural villagers will deepen. It’s going to be a matter of survival. Every rural person needs to know how to grow their own food in order to feed themselves.

Goedgedacht offers the following programmes under our Care for the Planet banner:

Permaculture is a system of agricultural and social design principles centered around simulating or directly utilizing the patterns and features observed in natural ecosystems, Goedgedacht provides a complete range of training courses in this area. Mikal Lambert and his team of Food Soul-jars offer permaculture training for young and old.

• Our substantial organic gardens provide vegetables for all  the thousands of hot meals served to children each day.
• We support community gardeners and small farmer initiatives with training and advice in the rural villages where we have POP centres.
• Each POP centre has a vegetable garden, these vegetables are used in our feeding programs
• We help small farmers in the region to access government funds, to learn business skills and find markets.
• Our own olive groves use biological farming practices in the production of olive oil and olive products.
• We encourage and practice recycling, bio-digesters for gas, “Wonder Bags” for cooking and solar everything else we can.
• We have a pilot fog harvester up on the mountain.
• We fertilize all our trees with “Cooper’s Muti” a highly nutritious liquid developed by a local, organic chemist PhD John Cooper that turns sewage into  non smelly yummy for non-edible plants.