Parents and EE members cleaned up toilets at the Sakumlandela Primary School on Saturday. Photos by Gilbert Pindano.
12 September 2012
About 10 parents and Equal Education (EE) members donned their aprons and yellow gloves at Sakumlandela Primary School and started cleaning the toilets as part of a new project to keep schools in Khayelitsha clean.
EE’s Victoria Mxenge branch, a parents’ group, met with principals to discuss ways they could play a role in their children’s schools. Lumkile Zani, head of EE’s Community Department, said that when they met with different principals they were told of the many things that needed to be done in their schools. “There is a long list of things that need to be done, like cleaning up and painting. So we chose to clean up the toilets at Sakumlandela. It is all about training parents to play a part in school and also for them to encourage other parents to help their kids, like with homework for instance,” said Zani.
One of the parents of a Grade 1 pupil at Sakumlandela, Nolonwabo Lilitha Nkatsho was attending a school meeting when she heard about this initiative. “After hearing of the ways we could help, I was keen and put down my name and number, I was called and told that there would be a clean-up of the toilets on Saturday. Before cleaning, the toilets were so dirty. There was writing on the wall and the floors were filthy. Don’t even get me started on the smell. We are doing this as a project and would like to include all schools as time progresses, I did not do this because I have a child at Sakumlandela, I did this with the aim of teaching our children cleaniliness,” explained Nkatsho.
She said they have a EE branch meeting every Wednesday and in this week’s meeting they would discuss ways in which to maintain and keep the toilets clean.
This coming Saturday, the team plan to go back to Sakumlandela and continue cleaning up where necessary. They also intend to start painting the exterior of the toilets.