Goedgedacht – Where Rural Children come First

Twenty years ago, touched by the extreme poverty afflicting farmworkers and their families in the Kasteelberg region, former social workers Peter and Anne Templeton, together with work colleague Mary Lack, began working on a project to help create a better future for rural children.

Originally built in 1704, Goedgedacht, a Cape Dutch farm in the foothills of the Kasteelberg mountains, has since become home to the Goedgedacht Trust. Over the past fourteen years the Templetons and Lack have built a team of ‘trustees’ that focus their energy on health, education, personal development and care for the planet.

At the forefront of their work has been the Path Out of Poverty programme, or POP for short. This programme reaches thousands of children in 13 different rural communities. These children come from areas where housing is poor and sanitation is lacking. Alcohol and domestic abuse and diseases such as tuberculosis are also rife.

The Trust’s ECD (Early Childhood Development Centre) collects babies from as young as four months every day from farms around the Kasteelberg and offers these children six years of care, good nutrition, education and stimulation to prepare them for school. Thereafter, children in the POP programme have access to after-school projects, youth programmes, sport and so on.

Having worked with over 2000 children and teenagers and built up a staff of over 80, many of them also from local rural communities, Anne Templeton says that young people in the region are now “reaching their full potential” as a result of POP’s programmes. “When we started out almost 98% of children in the area dropped out of school before they were 10 years old. Now all children on the programme attend high school and we have celebrated 31 students who have passed their matric” she says.

As well as looking to directly impact rural children’s lives through education, the Goedgedacht Trust also recognises the need to look after the environment for the sake of rural communities and has initiated the Climate Change Project. As Anne explains, “without paying attention to climate change there will in fact be a deepening of poverty in this area and no future for our rural children.”

For the trustees, all Goedgedacht’s projects centre on long term self-sustainability With this in mind, they have created the Olive Peace Grove, where 11000 olive trees have been planted over 35 of the farm’s 171 hectares. These olive trees are donated by people wanting to support the Trust. From the olives grown on the farm, extra virgin olive oil and olive products are produced and sold, mostly through Pick ‘n Pay. The income from the sale of the farm’s produce gets ploughed back into the POP programme providing income for the future.

Janet Perrott, the farm’s fundraiser, organizes Open Days for visitors who wish to see and understand the work of the Trust.  A statue of a San mother and child called “Maria” greets visitors at the entrance to Goedgedacht farm. The statue is based on a character from a short story by Laurence van de Post. At one point in the story the mother proclaims to the sky “Give this child something of the heart of the stars in return…because the stars have heart in plenty – and the heart of stars is a hunting heart, one that seeks with courage and finds the nourishment that is needed for life”.

For now, it is the Goedgedacht Trust itself that is giving local rural children the “nourishment” that they so badly need.

For more information: see Goedgedacht Trust; Path out of Poverty; Goedgedacht Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Donate an Olive Tree and plark or give further donations