Community-based organisation Vhathu Phanda’s Third Annual Back to School Festival was launched at the Stanza Bopape Community Hall in Mamelodi East on Friday.
The festival has been dubbed #Saspana and comprises a variety of activities.
The community-based organisation held a prayer session to pray for opening of the new school academic year, pray for peace at schools, pray for their volunteers to be loyal and work well.
They were joined by community members including Pastor Tracey Legodi and Prophet Solomon Legodi from house of Influencers church together they pray and sing.
“Today we have invited various stakeholders including pastors, so that they would pray for the success of the campaign, particularly for the volunteers and the gifts that we will be distributing to beneficiaries,” explained Chairperson of Vhathu Phanda Community Forum Thabo Moshabela.
According to Moshabela the campaign is going to be a long one as it will commence on 13 January and end on 28 February 2025.
“The pastor’s prayers for the gifts will make sure that the gifts reach their intended beneficiaries because sometimes volunteers get influenced by evil forces, resulting in the gifts not reaching their targeted destination, thus hindering the success of the campaign,” he said.
“The invitation to the pastors is also based on the advice that we must always involve God first in whatever we do and not call upon Him only when we run into trouble,” he said.
“Our motto entails the transformation of lives through education and that the said education must enable people to do better in their communities,” said Moshabela.
He said another objective of the festival was to pray for township schools as they have many problems and through prayer learners, teachers, principals and SGBs will have the much-needed strength to perform well in 2025.
He urged the community to take responsibility regarding the well-being of learners and the resolution of problems at township schools.
He pointed out that each time a learner displays wayward behaviour the blame is always heaped on the parents and teachers, forgetting that the community itself has a much bigger influence on the behaviour of learners.
Moshabela revealed that 20 communities in and around Mamelodi will benefit from their campaign in 2025.
“Our Vision 2047 mission aims at making sure that every community knows its responsibilities regarding the well-being of learners, and those responsibilities don’t even cost money, and they include things like polishing their clothes, washing their uniforms, helping them with homework and covering their books,” he said.
Maggie Moima from Second Chance Recovery Centre told Tshwane Talks that her organisation attended the festival so as to help Vhathu Phanda to pray for learners who would be going back to school next week and also to conduct drug and substance abuse awareness campaign for the learners.
According to Moima, Second Chance Recovery Centre deals with inpatients and outpatients who are recovering from drug addiction.
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