ALEXSAN KOPANO EDUCATIONAL TRUST Chairperson's Report 2005

• Project development work carried out by the National Facilitator
• Computer studio courses carried out by the computer studio teams
• Library and Child Activities
• Alexsan/Life Line Office

Our warm thanks go to our ongoing Educational Trust project funders being EED Germany, Cummins Corporation, Toyota South Africa, the Anglo American Chairman’s Fund, and Aristocrat Technologies Africa.

The Community Arts Project through GOMACC (Gauteng Organisation of Community Arts and Culture Centres) the National Department of Arts and Culture sponsored the Community Art Centre Awards and The National Lottery Board provided substantial funding towards the training and development of arts practitioners in the Province of Gauteng. The National Facilitator in this financial year stepped down as Chair and took on the role as Treasurer and Administrator.

The various projects will share their activities in their own sections below.

NATIONAL FACILITATOR – HOLLY LUTON-NEL

• Through the popularity of our Alex Computer studio a second branch was opened in Soweto in January 2007 called The Computer Tutor. The second year being the 2008/2009 year was also spent establishing the branch.

• Through our donors we are able to support a variety of projects implemented at the Alexsan Resource Centre.

• We continue to work on the development of the Emmaus Community Centre in Duduza. This centre is focusing on the support of HIV/AIDS child headed families and is working closely with the Department of Social Services. During this year the project identified the need to build a larger facility in order to cope with the demand of children in the area.

• We manage the administration and finance of the Gauteng Organisation of Community Arts and Culture Centres (GOMACC). During this period the Provincial reporting on National Community Art Centre Awards was completed and GOMACC received substantial funding from the Lottery on arts development programmes.

The Computer Tutor – Soweto

During this past period we focused on running the eight-week computer training and business fundamentals course and two Saturday classes. The evening classes have not been in demand.

The focus of this centre is similar to that of the Alex lead centre and that is to address some of the skills shortages of our youth who have left school and are looking for work.

The computer centre is based at the Nicro Centre in Soweto.

Due to the profile of Soweto and the spread out residential nature of the area we still had to advertise at the beginning of each course in order to support the branch. These advertising costs were gratefully supported by Aristocrats which enabled the branch to break even. We hope that the word of mouth that sustains Alex will also apply to Soweto in the future.

Alexsan Resource Centre - Alexandra

The role of the National Facilitator over this past year has continued to support the day to day management of the Alexsan Resource Centre. The City of Johannesburg has supported the salaries of the centre management, security and cleaning staff together with that of the library personnel. The day to day running costs have come from permanent and casual rentals received, one-off bookings and photocopying. This amount has just covered day to day costs whereas further fundraising will need to be done to manage the upgrading of the centre.

The Educational Trust with the assistance of its donors manages the computer studios, co-funds the Life Line Centre, supports the library projects, funds the day to day costs of the Internet Café, provides supplementary bursaries for computer students, supports events such as carols by candlelight and library competitions. These will be expanded on further in this report.

Emmaus Community Centre - Duduza

The Department of Social Services is in their second year of tenancy at the centre and their strong working relationship has continued with our management. Their Nigel branch needed to bring their operations closer to the people of Duduza and have found this move most beneficial.

In addition they are supporting the centre that is providing the community with a drop-in centre for AIDS orphans and children in need. The centre provides meals twice a day, clothes washing facilities and care givers who visit the children’s homes. The caregivers assist the children in the afternoons with their studies and have a selection of games for the little ones. They also assist the children in getting registered to receive a government grant and in finding a support parent in the community.

Currently the centre is working with 300 children as the current facilities are unable to accommodate more children. Statistics obtained have shown that up to 800 children could be accommodated. Management has been visited by EED Germany to explore ways of extending the current facility. This work will continue into the next financial year.

The centre also provides a cross section of other programmes such as food gardens, the Little Champs programme, youth support and the GOMACC Arts programme.

Gauteng Organisation of Community Arts and Culture Centres

Over the latter part of this period GOMACC, with assistance from the Lottery, was able to open its own offices. It was also able to take on one full time and one part time staff member. Initially GOMACC ran its office from the Provincial Department of Arts and Culture before they found their current offices at No 2 President Street, Newtown.

During the earlier part of this reporting period GOMACC coordinated for Gauteng Province the National Community Arts Centre Competition submitting their final report in January 2009.

In the latter part of the year, once the Lottery funding had been received, they focused on three main areas of development. The first was the placing of facilitators in ten centres of Gauteng to work with local communities, the second was to train a further group of arts practitioners to become trainers and the third was to provide NQF training to people involved in the arts to become Administrators within their own communities and organisations.

During the year they engaged with the National Department of Arts and Culture to discuss a way forward for community art centres and look at resuscitating the National Federation of Community Art Centres.

Interventions took place with Provincial Government with particular reference to starting an Annual Provincial Festival, initially for the Performing Arts, as discussed at the last AGM.

During the latter part of this period funds were received from the GACC, which will be actioned during the 2009/2010 reporting period, to assist those in the more rural areas of Gauteng apply for funds and receive training in basic accounts for recording purposes.

A similar situation of late funds received to set up a web site for the sector in the Province will also be actioned in the 2009/2010 year. At the AGM a demo will be presented and input from the meeting will add to the usefulness of the content proposed.

There was no Mosadi Wa Konokono Awards held in the current reporting period but it is understood they may again be scheduled for the 2009/2010 year.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank:

• EED Germany for supporting the National Facilitator
• National Lottery together with the Department of Arts and Culture for supporting the work of GOMACC.
• Toyota for their ongoing support of the computer project and library
• Cummins for supporting the computer studio and also inviting students to visit their offices
• Anglo American for supporting the Alexsan/Life Line project.
• Aristocrat Technologies for supporting much needed security items for the centre such as the generators and CPU’s for the computer studio and the tattle tape system for the library, upgrading old equipment and facilities and hosting the Women’s Day Function and the Annual Christmas Carols for the children.

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