Mandela Day 2018
Every year on the 18th of July, South Africans across the country pull together to recognise Nelson Mandela’s birthday by doing something he lived by: giving back. People spend 67 minutes of their time doing good in their communities.
At Learning in Reach, Mandela Day is our biggest fundraiser and awareness campaign of the year and we strive to come up with innovative ways to get people involved in our projects in some tangible way.
Have a look at our previous Mandela Day 2017
In 2018, we celebrated what would have been Madiba’s 100th birthday by going large. We asked volunteers and corporate staff to spend their 67 minutes doing something that would change the trajectory of our children’s lives and South Africa through combined efforts to deliver quality early childhood development.
Over the past three years, Learning in Reach has worked with 30 early childhood development (ECD) centres in Lavender Hill to help them reach minimum standards of health and safety, and teacher training requirements. Our goal is to have all of these centres compliant by 2020 so that we can focus on delivering quality education to children aged 3 to 6 years old.
In 2018, we mapped out exactly what each of these centres needed to become compliant, and what this would cost. One of our Mandela Day goals was to raise as much money as possible to tick off as many of these items as possible.
We highlighted these ECDs and their needs at our Mandela Day Maker Space Workshop, encouraging those individuals and companies coming to volunteer with us to engage with these schools and learn about their challenges while they spent their 67 minutes creating literacy and maths educational resources such as flash cards and counting sticks.
We also provided individuals with a social media toolkit that they could use to crowdfund R670 to donate towards our cause.
The feedback was very positive. Not only did our Makers have a fantastic time cutting, colouring and getting hands on, but we managed to raise Rxxxxx. We used this money to get ECD compliant.
In 2020, we’re going even bigger with Big Book Boxes. Click here to read more and sign up.