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I volunteered at SAEP during the Spring of 2006, and would like to give you a sense of what it is like to do volunteer work at SAEP. I kept a journal while I was there and thought I might share some its entries on this webpage, interspersed with some explanatory text from me:

"I step through the iron security gate and wander into the school’s 'courtyard' – a big rectangular cement area that is lined by classrooms on two levels all around. School has just let out, so there are throngs of students hanging out, running around and flooding towards me as they head to the exit. There is so much chaos sweeping around me, and the noise level is high; it’s a bit disorienting, actually. I scan the crowd and spot Khanyiswa across the courtyard, waving and calling my name. She comes over to greet me with a handshake and an electric smile and says, “I have the group together and waiting in our classroom…”

This is how my first day teaching an after-school workshop for SAEP began. I had met Khanyiswa just a week earlier when Norton Tennille and I visited her school to meet with one of the head teachers about tutorials for the new school year. Khanyiswa recognized Norton from the prior year’s SAEP programs and came up to say hello. Norton introduced us and mentioned that I was going to be teaching some drama classes in some other township schools. Immediately Khanyiswa asked if we could teach a poetry class as she knew many students who would be interested. I said that although poetry wasn’t exactly my specialty, I definitely had experience reading, writing and analyzing poetry, so sure – if she could gather a group of students, I could try to lead them in a poetry workshop.

"So we walk in to the classroom and there are about 15 students waiting, all sitting at or on top of wooden desks that are stacked up against the back wall of the room. The classroom is small and very warm (it’s a hot summery February afternoon), and there is a great deal of trash lying all over the floor. There are windows running around the top of the room, and through the security bars you can hear the after-school noise, including students laughing and shouting, dogs barking, car horns honking, and loud music blasting from radios. When we enter the room, the waiting students are all speaking to one another in Xhosa, which is a little intimidating, to be honest. This is definitely their turf. So I say hello, introduce myself, and ask them to help me move the desks into a circle. They spring into action, shifting desks around, making room for one another…and so we begin…"

I had arrived in South Africa only two weeks earlier to begin my adventure as a volunteer for SAEP. By some magical stroke of luck, the company I work for in the U.S. had granted me permission to spend two months in Cape Town to work with SAEP and teach drama classes to high school students in the township high schools. What a dream come true for me – spending time doing something that I feel so passionately about, in one of my favorite cities in the world – incredible!

When I got to Cape Town, I dove right in to my volunteer work with SAEP. Beginning my second day in-country, I was sitting in on meetings with teachers and principals as we worked to assess their schools’ needs for the coming year and began to set-up after school tutorials through the University of Cape Town’s student-run organization called TeachOut. During these meetings we would also mention that I would be in town for the next two months and was interested in teaching some extracurricular drama classes as well. The interest in this prospect was overwhelming; nearly every teacher to whom we mentioned this possibility was keen to get something like this going at his/her school. I quickly realized that I was going to be very busy over the next eight weeks.

So, before I knew it, I was teaching four workshops each week – 2 in drama and 2 in poetry – at three different high schools. My students ranged in age from 14 to 18, and their experiences with these art forms were incredibly varied as well. Some students had taken poetry classes before, some had acted in school or community theatre, others had never even attempted to write a poem and others had never set foot on a stage. But there is one thing that every single one of my students had in common – they all wanted to be there. These after school enrichment activities were voluntary, and each of those students was keen to participate.

In the first class for each of my groups, we discussed why they were participating in these activities and why they had an interest in poetry or drama. The constantly recurring sentiment was something like this – “I think it is a great way to express myself. It’s a way I can show others what I think and feel, and it will help me learn about things I might not know otherwise.”

My mission was set out clearly – these students were looking for an outlet...an outlet to be creative and expressive, a chance show themselves and share with one another what they had to say.

The activities we did varied from week to week. In drama classes, we spent a lot of time doing warm-ups and getting the students to feel comfortable working in groups and to lose their feelings of self-consciousness. They participated in improvisation games, pantomime, creative movement, and storytelling. Eventually they began creating stories and scenes in small groups, devising the characters and plotlines as a team and working through the story with improvisation and writing. It was always a treat to see what creative stories they would come up with, and it was amazing to watch them work together, deal with conflict, and move to consensus within their small groups. It was satisfying, too, to watch some of the students truly come out of their shells – students who were incredibly quiet and shy, and hesitant to even speak in front of the group at first were up on “stage,” playing a character with confidence and commitment. Definitely an example of what I like to call “goose-bump inducing moments”…

The poetry workshops were definitely more of a challenge for me, but they provided an even bigger thrill – the students keen to participate in these classes were incredibly sensitive and astute in their observations and thoughts both in analyzing and writing poems. Each week we spent time reading and discussing a poem I had chosen, and then the students used something from this poem (perhaps in style or theme) as a springboard for writing their own poetry.

In this first day of class, however, we did a very basic exercise, just to get them going and to help me assess where they were with their writing. The students paired up and spent time interviewing one another, trying to find out as much as they could in the allotted time. Each student then created a poem about the person they interviewed, based on the information they uncovered in the interview…

"At the end of 20 minutes, over half the students volunteer to share their poems aloud. They were really quite good! Some provided great images – I’ll always now picture one boy running down the street as a flash of bright yellow; most were thoughtful; and with each reading, you could see each student’s style shining through naturally. One student read his poem with a bit of a freestyle/hip-hop vibe, while another read in a really melodic, gentle manner. One boy was paired up with a good friend of his, and he wrote a really sweet poem about what a good person this guy is and how he is lucky to have him as a friend. Pretty sensitive; impressive to me that a 14 year old boy was so willing to share that in a group on the first day of a workshop! I was amazed. We talked a bit about the exercise afterwards, and one student said, 'I liked this. It was nice, too, that we got to know one another from the interviews and hearing each other’s poems.' These are the great moments…when the students truly 'get it'…such an exciting feeling."

A few weeks later we used random, uncaptioned photos I had cut from the newspaper as the subjects for writing. Each student chose a photo from the “gallery” I had set up and then set out to write a poem that somehow related to the photo. Some were very literal, telling the student’s version of the photo’s story, while others were more abstract, focusing more on the emotional content found in the photo. And yet others were more creative interpretations, using one little thing – an image, and implied sound or feeling – from the photo which led to a poem that might seem to be completely disconnected from the image at hand. In any case, the poems were absolutely dazzling!

"So we wrapped for the day, they all gave me hugs as they left and said that they’d be back next week (whew!)…as we walked out of the school yard, I said something like, 'Alright my friends…see you later!' And one of them turned back and said, 'Yes, you are our friend now. We are all friends. See you next week!'”

And come back, they did. Week after week, students came to my workshops, eager to learn, share, write, perform…they really seemed to enjoy being part of a group with common interests, and they were always keen to discuss things that were happening in their lives. We discussed their families, communities, their dreams and aspirations for the future, and we spent a lot of time talking about their culture and how after all the changes South Africa has seen since Apartheid, these teens feel like they’re “caught” between two worlds. They see the traditions and culture of their parents’ generation and want to embrace it, yet they find themselves drawn to Western ways and all the influences of current popular culture. It is a time of conflict and questioning for many of them, and they really saw these artistic outlets as ways to express themselves and continue on a path of self discovery.

The students I met and the personal connections I made with them will stay with me forever. Words cannot properly express how much of an impact they have made on me, and just how much they have changed my life. Likewise, SAEP is clearly making an impact on the lives of students throughout the Cape Flats. Their academic and extracurricular activities, all volunteer-run, are touching the lives of teens who might otherwise not have the opportunity to improve their study skills, grasp difficult concepts in class, discover a new talent, or improve their self-confidence and interpersonal skills.

A highlight, and a great example of how these kinds of programs affect the participants…a student in one of my poetry groups came up to me after class and said something like this:

“I just want you to know that I really like this class. I used to write a lot of poetry and stories, but I stopped because nobody would listen to them. So I quit. But you like to listen to our poems and what we have to say. Sometimes when you say things, it gives us things to think about and it…it inspires me.”

My experience volunteering with SAEP was truly an honor. I feel so lucky to have been able to live in Cape Town, really live there, doing the work I did. This is the kind of work that I’ve always said I wanted to do…and there I was, actually doing it…and I loved it more than I even thought possible. It is truly an amazing feeling to wake up every morning feeling completely inspired, knowing that the work you do that day will make a change in someone’s life.