Platt Drive School Counselling centre of hope,love,care Gives Back

Give a child a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a child to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. The project that we at Platt Drive Primary School have embarked on is about empowering the learner for a lifetime through individual counselling, awareness campaigns and remedial classes.

FIND A NEED AND FILL IT

Platt Drive Primary School has embarked on a social development project. The title of the project is Empowering children. We believe in empowering a child for a lifetime and not just for a day so we want to impart to our learners knowledge and skills that can help them face daily challenges. Miss Lydia Govender a(Psychologist )together with the support of the inclusive education team as well as the support of the principal(MR T D Shange) and deputy principal(Mr T Mariappen) at Platt Drive has started the empowering children project in February 2018. Miss Govender has been allocated a classroom at the school where she currently runs a Counselling and training Centre. Counselling and training takes place in this room on a daily basis. Learners, parents and educators are being provided with a free service at the school. There are currently 850 learners at the school and they all come from the surrounding informal settlements such as Uganda, Pilgrim and the transit camp in the area of Isipingo. Our learners come from child headed households and according to statistics most households have no income. Our learners currently get meals at school and for most of them the meal they are given at school is the only meal for the day. They come from extremely underprivileged backgrounds as well as homes where they are exposed to drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence and other forms of abuse. Miss L Govender often goes to the Uganda settlement with the house of David team and runs programmes with the kids and has seen the great need for these learners to receive basic life skills, support and empowerment. Miss Govender has assisted more than 90 learners as well as more than 50 parents from February 2018 until July 2018.Miss Govender does scholastic assessments, interviews parents and learners as well as Counselling, report writing and follows up on cases. Every learner has a file and a reference number. Miss Govender is passionate about empowering children and believes that prevention is better than cure so she engages in educational workshops and awareness campaigns around topics like child abuse, substance abuse, suicide, teenage pregnancy, bullying and many other relevant topics. Her vision is to see the Centre become an intervention and training centre. She also started a remedial reading and writing program to help learners with barriers. Miss Govender has also started to collect clothes, blankets and shoes and distributes them to those in need. This Centre has become a haven of hope and peace over a short space of time. Miss Govender has taken this initiative to a new level with the vision of making this a counselling centre opened to other schools in the area. She has engaged a few companies and members of the community and has managed to secure carpets, paint and 2 volunteers who have painted cartoon characters on the wall of the room. The idea is to make this room a child friendly room and a therapy room where children will feel safe and comfortable to discuss sensitive issues they are being faced with. Thus far we have seen great success stories. She has dealt with many cases of child Abuse, trauma, behaviour problems as well as cases of neglect. She works closely with the educators, parents and learners to find immediate intervention strategies. Miss Govender has also built a good relationship with the local clinic and she often takes learners that need medical attention immediately. The mission statement of the centre is find a need and fill it. We get to serve the community we love.

We would like to request your assistance in helping us make our school a better environment for learners. We would appreciate your partnership with us. Your assistance in any way possible will be highly appreciated. There is a great need at Platt Drive Primary. Our learners are coming from adverse poverty. Most of them sleep on the floor with no blankets and they do not have clothes and food readily available. Miss Govender has also found that many learners hail from child headed households as well as homes where both parents are unemployed. She also found that most of our learners are also infected with the HIV virus and are on treatment.