Cape Town - While children in rural communities bear the brunt of limited resources, Anna Brom drew inspiration from her own childhood to pursue her lifelong goal of improving the lives of underprivileged rural agricultural communities through the power of holistic education.
Growing up on a farm near Stellenbosch, Brom had a strong desire to help and elevate impoverished communities. She worked as a volunteer remedial teacher for some time and when the time was right, she founded the Anna Foundation in 2005 to make the lives of children and women on the farms much better.
“I spent much of my childhood playing with the farm children that lived on the nearby farms. From a young age, I was always called to come inside for dinner or to have a bath, but nobody called these children home. As I grew older, I started to notice the huge differences in the way these children lived compared to my privileged upbringing.
“After completing my undergraduate studies at Stellenbosch University, I received a fellowship to study for a Master’s degree in social development in the Netherlands, and on completion of my Master’s, I returned to South Africa and worked in the non-profit world for a year or two. I quickly realised that if I wanted to work with children, I needed a teaching qualification, and so I did a postgraduate degree in education through Unisa. As part of this qualification, I chose to do my teaching practical at a farm school in Mpumalanga, and I was struck by the needs of the children in this school.
"The lack of school desks, the lack of educational and sports resources, and the total absence of reading materials made me approach Exclusive Books to donate a box of brand-new books. The children would come to me during breaks to listen to me read. I also started running with the children after school and then entered a group of children in a local race in the nearby town. After that so many children wanted to join my running team. I am a strong believer in the holistic development of a child. Although my teaching practical was five weeks, I ended up staying at that school for 1.5 years! That is when the Anna Foundation was started," said Brom.
Through the foundation's three Rs programme (reading, running, and writing), it offers children with much-needed literacy and numeracy assistance, encourages a love for all kinds of sports and healthy lifestyles, and teaches children how to integrate values into their day-to-day lives.
By addressing the needs of rural children, Brom said that she wanted farm children to have access to some of the opportunities that other children enjoy because the greatest challenge faced by rural children was the quality of the schooling they receive.
"The quality of the schooling they receive has been affected by the pandemic as they get fewer schooling hours and actual teaching contact time. These children do not have access to online teaching or remote learning, and we have seen such a dramatic decline in their academic standards. So many of the children with whom we work now fall into a category of children needing remedial support, and so many of our younger learners who entered the formal schooling system during the past two years do not have the basic building blocks to progress," she said.
As the foundation also provides skills and training to rural women in order to empower them to implement the programmes and make a difference within their communities, the Project and Education co-ordinator, Mariske Pieterse, said that the foundation offers a sense of hope to communities who thought there would be no light at the end of the tunnel.
"I think the work we do in the communities provides many of these children and parents with opportunities they would otherwise not have. One of our favourite success stories is about a little girl who was part of one of our farm projects in her Grade R year and is now in matric at Stellenbosch High School with plans to study nursing next year. Although Mariska was only in Grade R when we met her, we recognised a resilient twinkle in her eyes.
“Not many organisations offer services in rural communities. As a project manager, I drive long distances to service some of the farms, but my experience shows that it is often the children that benefit the most from our interventions and our support. They have such limited access to the world out there, and they really take everything you offer them with so much enthusiasm and appreciation,“ said Pieterse.
Adding to the message of hope, Brom said that she would like the Anna Foundation to continue to make a sustainable difference in the lives of children in all rural areas so that they can function in society and be employable.
"For me, sustainable intervention means offering them a new outlook for their futures and building the self-worth of all children so that they can reach for their dreams. This is not a far-fetched vision, as every child has the right to dignity and self-worth.
"If you believe in the child, they will learn to believe in themselves as well. From there, they build a positive self-worth. If you can help a child in this way, I truly believe you have given that child a lifelong gift," said Brom.
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