31.05.2012

Soap and Tooth Paste




Soap and Tooth Paste



The third day! Today our English teacher Mette came 30 min. too late because of the traffic but she came with breakfast! 


Kerry Rosser and Catherine Taylor sent us some great pictures from Afrika Tikkun's Early Childhood Development Programme.


Container group 1 has received their 1000 blocks of soap and 1000 tubes of tooth paste (pictures above) along with more clothes!


Container group 2 will later this day receive more football stuff like t-shirts, shorts and shoes. 


Container group 3 haven't yet been so lucky with their emails and phone calls, but though they started the day of with some big plastic bags of clothes. Thumps up!


It hasn'tt been one of our most effective days. but
all in all we have almost gathered a whole classroom with clothes and shoes - we think around 10-15 m3.



30.05.2012

Press release

The PR-group of our project have made a press release which they have sent to places like the local newspaper to create some publicity around the project. Here you see a translated version of it.


PRESS RELEASE


High-school students are working globally


High-school students from the Copenhagen Open Gymnasium take global responsibility - this week they are collecting clothes, shoes, school material and toiletries to other children and young people from Cape Town townships. Maersk Line in Cape Town is shipping the things in a container from Valby in Cpenhagen to Cape Town, where the NGO Afrika Tikkun takes over.
This week 30 freshman students from the Copenhagen Open Gymnasium are working on a project that will further them in becoming citizens of a global world. They are in the process of collecting plenty of stuff for children from exposed areas in Cape Town.
Anything from toothpaste to pencils, and the collection is well on its way. Colgate and Palmolive have donated a thousand tubes of toothpaste and a thousand pieces of hand soap to the project. The main library in Copenhagen have donated 87 books in English. But those donations are only a small step on the way to load an entire container with things that will come in handy for the children in Cape Town.
Maersk Line in Cape Town will be delivering the container which they will ship free of charge from Valby in Copenhagen to Cape Town in South Africa. Here the NGO Afrika Tikkun takes over. It’s a local organisation that works towards empowering children and young people in Cape Town’s townships. Since the democratization in 1994,  Afrika Tikkun has built a number of centres in exposed areas. This is what the donations will go to and Afrika Tikkun will be in charge of the distribution.
Kristian is one of the students in the project - he says: “We are doing this because we have the opportunity to do it. We can make contact to people we know who can contribute with materials which can help Afrika Tikkun. It’s about making use of the opportunities you get, for one thing, through the people you know. There is always someone who wants to help.”
Several donors have been very helpful. The project started out as co-operation with AP Moeller Maersk by way of a parent who quickly gained contact to their department in South Africa. Here they were very interested in supporting the project with both container and shipment.
Do you want to contribute with things to the project, it all takes place at the Copenhagen Open Gymnasium. Write an email to peter.bidstrup@kg.dk if you have a donation or anything
to ask. The container will be shipped from the Copenhagen Open Gymasium, on Friday the 1st of June.


Contact:

Peter Bidstrup, +45 61 88 56 78, peter.bidstrup@kg.dk

Malthe Schjerlund, +45 29 47 18 27, malthe.schjerlund@kg.dk


Project manager:
Lektor Mette Jørgensen, Copenhagen Open Gymnasium, +45 24 40 93 64, me@kg.dk


Day 2



 PR group at work

Today is the second day of our project week. We started the day with tons of nice results! the container group 1 had got  donated a big plastic bag of clothes from an anonymous person. what a kind soul. One of the members of container group 2 have been at a football club receiving a big donation of football clothes and shoes. The container group 3 might started the day of strongest with 3 full bags of clothes and shoes!
Our PR group (public relation) have been working on a article that they send out to lots a different local and national news papers.
This morning they've got some auto answers from the news papers and they are still awaiting answers
Tomorrow the container groups will be receiving even more stuff, the work they’ve done is really something to be proud of! P.s our dear blogger Mathias is translating the PR groups article from Danish to English so you guys who don't understand, danish can enjoy it.

29.05.2012

Day 1

Today is the first day of 5 days that Our school has given us to work intensively on the Project. Lots of things have to be done till friday where we pack the Maersk container and send down to South Africa.
The Container group 1, have gathered a few bags with clothes, and 1000 tubes of colgate toothpaste and 1000 soaps. That’s progress!Container group 2. have been calling around asking for donations for our project, they’ve got a lot of no’s, but also a yes! They’ve got a donation from a football club. The donation consisted of Football shoes and football clothes.
Container group number 3 (the pencil girls), have been calling and emailing for books. They’ve contacted 3 libraries, 4 elementary schools and 7 paper firms.

That’s a lot of progress in one day!

24.05.2012

23.05.2012

Success

The girls pencil boxes has already turned out to be a success.
One person alone donated all this!

A good case

The project is really moving foward, and if you click on the link below you'll see a facebook page that one of the container groups have made. The purpose of the event is to collect as many pencils as possible and then of course send them to South Africa along with all the other stuff that we collect.

http://www.facebook.com/events/119004944903099/
Unfortunately the page is in Danish, but as you can see a lot of people intend to participate, and that's what's most important.

The sign says: "Give a pencil to South Africa"

21.05.2012

Logbook 1.

Today has been a very good day for our project. We had a skype meeting with Kerry Rosser and Cathrine Taylor. It was the first time for us to see the faces of Kerry and Cathrine, it was nice finally to get faces on those person we have heard so much about. The container groups asked Kerry and Cathrine questions about the project and we got really positive feedback. They gave us their permission to publish pictures of the children in Mfulini, which will be shown as soon as possible.
It seems as if the skype-call has helped us to a better understanding of the whole project. It has clarified some necessary things and suddenly everything seens more tangible.

Project Description


Hi Everyone!


Here's a short description of the project we're working on:
We are a class at Copenhagen Open High School working with a project about corporate social responsibility - or CSR. Our school's profile is very innovative and global. The purpose of our project is to make a global contact, and in order to do that we have been given the opportunity to co-operate with Maersk Line in Cape Town. We have also gained a partnership with the organisation Afrika Tikkun (www.afrikatikkun.org) which is a ‘non-profit’ organisation who has helped families since 1994. Afrika Tikkun has different projects attached to helping and empowering children and young people in different townships in South Africa. The township that we are focusing on is in Western Cape and is called Mfuleni.

Afrika Tikkun's work is divided into three areas:
Development Programmes whose goal is to develop different groups, e.g. children, young people and children with special needs and their families.
Centres of Excellence are 6 centres which have got facilities that primarily kids and adolescents can gain from. They eat and ‘hang out’ there, like in an after-school care.
Special Projects cooperate with Afrika Tikkun and other various organisations. One of them focuses on helping the attendees making food, use computers and other technology. Other centres specialise in helping the physically and mentally troubled, or sexually abused children.

Our project is a cooperation with both Maersk Line in Cape Town and Afrika Tikkun with the goal of finding the best way of supporting the Afrika Tikkun's  development programmes in South Africa. Maersk has given us the possibility to get our things shipped in a container to South Africa. Things that we have collected during the project for the benefit of all young people, children and their parents who attend the Afrika Tikkun programmes.

10.05.2012

Video



Here you see a video from the early process of generating ideas.

First Entry

Finally the blog is up running.
This is the first blog entry of many. Actually this entry is just a test to see if everything looks ok. We're all very new to blogging, so you have to bear with us.