📽️ When a town raises its children
This morning, runners braved the cold and rain to cover 60 km from Colesberg to Philippolis, with an entire community rallying behind two local schools.
They trained for weeks by the road between Colesberg and Philippolis. Sixty kilometres is a long way by any measure - longer still on a cold, rainy day, with wet tar underfoot and a small town waiting at the other end.
This morning, runners set out to cover that distance in support of Bergmanshoogte Primary School and Love Philippolis ECD, in the small Southern Free State town of Philippolis. Children joined them at five-kilometre intervals. Along the way, the community supplied water and encouragement.
The run is a fundraiser. Bergmanshoogte needs financial support to help more learners attend sporting events and represent their school. Love Philippolis ECD needs the resources to give each child the best possible chance of being ready for formal schooling.
But watching people prepare for this day, and then watching the community gather around them, it becomes clear that something else is being built along this road: a child’s sense that they belong to a place that values them and is prepared to make an effort on their behalf.
A school connected to its community
The school is connected to teachers who train for weeks and children who don their running shoes, and to sponsors willing to attach their names and resources to the cause.
Chargo Merino Inn in Colesberg, JOMA, Philippolis Post, The Munga and Gariep, A Forever Resort were among those thanked for coming aboard. Others offered donations, water, refreshments or their presence along the route.
These acts tell children that their school is not an island. Belonging is often spoken of as a feeling, but for children it's built through ordinary evidence.
Children watching adults serve
The people supporting Love Philippolis ECD and Bergmanshoogte are giving to children who will grow up in front of the same people who made those opportunities possible. Cornel Smuts trained and committed to the distance. He invited children and the wider community into the effort on a cold and Saturday.
Today, the children experienced belonging on a much larger scale as the people of their community came out for them. Adults trained for weeks and ran through the rain. Businesses offered sponsorship, vehicles followed the runners and people provided encouragement along the road. None of this was done for an abstract cause or for children living somewhere else. It was done for these children, in this town, whose futures are valued by the people supporting them.
The children joining every five kilometres saw how a community comes together around a shared purpose as they helped take that purpose home.
The community a school creates
A community-backed school changes the relationship between a town and its children. Its community sees education as part of the town’s shared future.
In a place like Philippolis, a school supported by the community directs attention towards what can be made stronger. It gives people something real to protect and children something to belong to.
Lynette Spencer
Anchen Coetzee
Liz Thorne
Mariana Balt
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