Not too many things happened during this time period, I continued reading literature regarding baseline survey of early child development in developing countries, talked with people in the community, identify key issue which I need to add into the survey; attended monthly hub meetings, tried to understand their responsibilities for supporting our core mission: promoting overall health status of vulnerable children in Munsieville.

I went into several child care centers in shack area with Betty, to observe how they take care of young kids. There is an ongoing research project in Thoughtful Path. Similar to a typical case-control study, they select teachers from some child care centers, provide them professional training and materials (case group), in the meantime, only consulate were provided to teachers in other child care centers (control group). So we go into these centers, observe teacher’s, children’s action, document them and see if kids from case group have better performance in daily life and in school. I believe kids from case group will have much better performance for sure. Flyers, posters and books are everywhere, teachers always remind children to behave healthy, and use puzzle game for brain development. However, in  control groups, untrained teachers in these centers basically do nothing but just feed kids breakfast and lunch, children were playing on their own, and teachers (or you can say housewives) just watch TV or do their own stuff. It is really sad seeing these, as an international charity organization, we dedicated to do our best providing best service to promote local people, but for evaluation purpose, we can’t fully help some of them. This makes me feel so bad and heartbroken.

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One of the critical issues in shack area is fire. Paul told me that every week there is a shack burnt down, although we are focusing on early childhood development, we can’t just see people suffering and do nothing. So, in a weekend, collaborating with a Baptist church from Randfontein (a city near Munviesille), we brought many food and living essentials to families whose house have recently been burnt down, and build new home for them. I am not good at constructing, but was doing my part: painting and help moving stuff from here to there.  

Always feel good for helping people.   

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