The Crèche
When Sister Priscilla arrived at The Holy Cross mission, she recognized that there was a need for a crèche or Day Care centre for pre-school children. This need arose from the prevalence of the child headed families and the reluctance of the “head of the family” to leave their younger siblings while they attended school. The need also arose to allow the children to play, be children and thus escape from the predicament they face as orphans and members of a child headed family.
To deal with the immediate needs and cater for the pre-school brothers and sisters of the child headed families attending the nearby primary/secondary school, Sister Priscilla converted a shed in to a rudimentary pre-school Day Care centre which could house up to 24 children. As the number of orphans and child headed families continued to grow and the reach of the Home Based Care Programme increase, so did the need for a larger facility.
From funds received from other donors, Sister Priscilla was able to fulfil a dream by constructing a crèche that is able to cater for some 150 pre-school children. The crèche – The Bishop Mansuet Biyase Crèche – was opened in August 2004. The crèche has 4 classrooms, a central service area and is fully equipped with a playground adjacent. The children receive 3 meals a day at the crèche thereby improving their health significantly. Currently, the crèche has 120 children and is staffed by a team of seven.
One of the challenges is to provide transport for the children in this deeply rural area where there is no public transport and the very young children would otherwise need to walk long distances to attend the crèche. Initially, a 1.3 ton truck that was purchased by the Trust was utilised to transport building materials to erect houses for the children in conjunction with a programme with Homeplan, a Holland based charity (See “Housing”). It is now utilised full-time to ferry children to and from the crèche. Each schoolday, more than 100 children are collected from 4 collection points and taken to the crèche and then returned to tto the collection points at the end of the day. Currently, another donor has made funds available for the wages of the driver.
The Trust has also provided stationery, toys and equipment for the crèche and currently funds the salary of a remedial teacher and cook/cleaner.
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