Latest News

View our news archive for 2010.

CSD at WordFest

The National Arts Festival, now in its 37th year, has proved its sustainability and has grown to be one of the leading arts festivals in southern Africa. Its objectives are to deliver excellence; encourage innovation and development in the arts by providing a platform for both established and emerging South African artists; create opportunities for collaboration with international artists; and build new audiences. Thousands of people have descended on Grahamstown to experience 10 days of Amazing. On the Fringe programme, Wordfest is a festival of language and literature.

Some of the Self-Help Groups initiated and coordinated by CSD are exhibiting the wares at Wordfest. The Se ...read more

The Need for ECD

The 2011 Annual National Assessment (ANA) results were released by the Basic Education Minister, Angie Motshegka earlier this week. The ANA is the most comprehensive assessment of literacy and numeracy skills in young learners ever conducted in South Africa. More than six-million Foundation Phase learners (GrR-3) and intermediate phase learners (Grd 4-6) attending government schools around the country wrote the ANA. The results paint a bleak picture for the future of these young learners. On ...read more

It's a Go for Debenek!

In July 2008 CSD undertook to train 20 ECD practitioners (Level 4) in Debenek, Keiskamma Hoek, about 130 km from Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape. Due to the distances and the extreme poverty and unemployment in this area, CSD did the training at a Community Hall in the town. This entailed the CSD facilitator travelling to Debenek once a month to conduct contact sessions lasting for 5 days. In addition these practitioners had the opportunity to visit well-functioning ECD centres in Grahamstown ...read more

A Night of Story Telling from Zinzi's Blog

An important part of any organization involved in quality distance teaching and learning is a reliable vehicle to get them to their students. On-site support visits form part of the assessments of CSD’s early childhood development and community development courses and facilitators have to sometimes travel as far as Mthatha.
Nobody knew this better than Mrs Thelma Henderson who started CSD 30 years ago. Her only criteria when CSD was buying a vehicle was that it should seat three “mammas ...read more