A community service programme brings warmth to those dying of Aids
GAUDI le Roux (17) has never felt the same after his first outing to Sacred Heart Aids Hospice House in Johannesburg. ”It makes you more aware, and you realise what Aids can do to you. I was talking to this lady in the other room, she had completed a computer course and was about to look for work when she got sick,” said Le Roux, a grade 11 pupil at Sacred Heart College.
Visits like this are part of the school’s community service programme for grade 11 pupils. ”They need to learn that they will have relationships in the future and as teenagers, they need to be more cautious,” said Maria Rebelo, the school counsellor, who has been in charge of the community service programme for the past three years.
For eight weeks, every Friday Le Roux and his group will visit Sacred Heart Aids Hospice House patients. With the Aids virus said to be decimating the youth, Le Roux’s feelings sum up how important it is to prepare teenagers for the challenges they face in adulthood.
At Saint Teresa, an Aids patients’ home run by Catholic Sisters of Charity in Yeoville, schoolchildren have brought warmth to the patients and the environment. Saint Teresa is home to 60 people with Aids, 20 of whom are children. ”They teach the children how to read and write. They also teach them songs, pray and play with them every Wednesday and Friday afternoon,” said one senior sister at Saint Teresa.
The community service programme has equipped teenagers from Sacred Heart College with an important sense of the social responsibilities that can benefit the various neighbourhoods they belong to. ”Children must have a very humble attitude. They must not think they are better than the less fortunate people,” said Rebelo, when asked what the school expected the participants to gain from the project.
On the second visit, the children would find some of the patients they spoke to previously had died, said Rebelo: ”From this they learn about suffering, courage, death and emotion.” At the beginning, most children had difficulties and thought they would not handle the pressure, said Rebelo. ”It is difficult, but I think I will be able to cope as time goes on,” said Le Roux.
The participants are expected to identify other people’s needs and come up with solutions. At Sacred Heart House the students came up with the idea of a vegetable garden and have planted one bed that is already flourishing.
— The Teacher/Mail & Guardian, August 21, 2000.
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