Maximising your potential – What is your treasure?

Date Released: Tue, 5 April 2011 17:00 +0200

The role of the Community Development Practitioner (CDP) is to work alongside Early Childhood Development (ECD) Practitioners to reach out into the community from the base of the pre-school. This is one of the unique aspects of the CSD’s social development model to ECD training which involves preschools being transformed into community places of support and care. Currently there are more than twenty CDP’s trained by the Centre operating in the Grahamstown area.

One of their most important roles is to facilitate the establishment of Self-Help Groups (SHG’s). The underlying principle for these SHG’s is that poverty is not simply an economic problem, but includes a continuous process of disempowerment and isolation. Consequently, simply meeting material needs does not always alleviate poverty. Standing alone, individuals experience weakness, but whenstanding together the poor can have great strength. Learning to rely on themselves in the power of a group situation builds confidence and development.

On 23 March 2011 CSD organised a “Maximising your potential workshop facilitated by Thandi Mzizi. “The workshop was aimed at supporting the CDP’s that we work with and help them gain confidence through identifying and maximising their own personal goals” said Ida Khawababa, the CSD Community Development Coordinator. More than 30 people took part in the workshop. These included members from SHG’s around Grahamstown and Bathurst as well as CDP’s and community development facilitators. The workshop covered topics like born for a purpose; your potential, enemies of potential, past failure.

The feeling at the end of the workshop was one of enlightenment and happiness with people really having evaluated what their potential is and how this discovery will impact on the daily actions as `CDP’s and SHG members. For more information on these workshops contact Ida Khawababa at CSD.