As CEO of Funanani, a charitable trust established to break the cycle of poverty by providing services to orphaned and vulnerable children in Mamelodi, Elmien Claassens meets many remarkable people. Here, she reflects on the resilience of the children who attend the early childhood development centres run by Funanani.
Sitting in my office this morning, I compared children in my thoughts to elastic bands that we use on a daily basis in our offices – holding things together, and having the ability to stretch to great capacity.
The dictionary defines resilience as the ability to spring back into shape or the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. The best synonym for resilience is toughness.
This makes me think of many faces I daily see in our centres – faces of children that are experiencing very difficult circumstances every day, and still they have the ability to smile and look more happy than many other children I know, including my own. My own children can moan and groan of how hard their life is, not having everything their hearts desire, and then I look at these faces in our Funanani communities, being so content and happy with their circumstances, mostly very hard and challenging.
Life in the communities is not easy if we measure their daily lives against what we are used to in the suburbs. I am always amazed at the toughness of the children, and how they bounce back after hardships, and in most cases daily hardships – not just now and again.
I ask myself the question: how do the children survive under these hardships and trials? And without finding an answer, I only see the children bouncing back and I realize that they are not survivors, they are conquerors! Not only are they conquering their daily hardships, they move into a happy place – even amongst circumstances that are never close to easy. That makes them strong, and more resilient than most children having less to deal with at a very young age.
Funanani is playing a very small part in helping children to bounce back at life, and to become more resilient, despite circumstances. This is my personal purpose and gives me significance every morning, to contribute towards the lives of children. If we can restore the bouncing ability of one child, it is worth the effort. In the case of Funanani, we are restoring hundreds of children on a daily basis.
To find out more about Funanani’s project on Different.org, click here.
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