The Boys & Girls Clubs of Santa Monica took 9 Club members from Pomona, Hawaii, and Santa Monica to the Boys & Girls Club in Soweto, South Africa where they participated in hands-on workshops and learned about poverty and race-related issues in Africa while doing community service projects. Both the kids & their adult mentors helped to renovate Club buildings and create edible gardens which will sustain the Club and surrounding community in the future. In addition, the teens had the opportunity to share cultural exchanges with their African peers and create lasting friendships. Club staff, board members and friends from our community traveled to South Africa with the kids and got to spend 2 weeks sharing a variety of life-changing experiences as the teens garnered invaluable lessons in humility, positive values & gratitude.
View photos from this inspiring travel experience here.
For many of the kids, this was their first time leaving the country, but for all of the kids, this trip was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience a culture drastically different from their own. The experience of creating friendships with kids & community members halfway across the globe was poignant for all who attended. Among the experiences the teens were given were a trip to Cape Town to see where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned, a visit to the Slave Lodge where slaves were kept during the slave trade, and a stopover at the historic Apartheid Museum. As for outdoor exploration, the kids got to go on a 3-day Safari in Kruger National Park where they saw lions, leopards, elephants, zebras and more. They also got to visit the famed southern-most point of the African continent, named the ‘Cape of Good Hope’, where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet.
In the first week, the team landed in Johannesburg, drove to Chisomo Safari Camp in Limpopo in Northern South Africa and got to go on safari in the Karongwe Game Reserve, where over 40 mammal species live, including the Big 5 (elephants, lions, leopards, buffalo & rhino). In addition to the Big 5, they saw cheetah, warthogs, crocodiles, hippopotamus, eland, kutu and nyala. This reserve focused on restoration of the natural environment, conservation, and the promotion of biodiversity. After the safari, the team traveled to Cape Town where they visited the Amy Biehl Foundation and spent the afternoon on Robben Island learning about Apartheid. Also during the first week, the group visited an informal settlement in Masiphumelele, where they got to experience township life first-hand.
In the second week, the kids and adults traveled to Soweto to do community service at the Boys & Girls Club branch in Pimville. Our team worked alongside teens and community members in Soweto to build a vegetable and herb garden which will help to sustain the food program at the Club in Soweto. Other duties the team had included beautification of the building, painting and creating mosaics. Some of the kids had the opportunity to help assemble the media center, installing 3 new computers and a music recording studio.
The people they encountered and the environments they were exposed to opened both the kid’s and the adult’s eyes to a new way of thinking about and appreciating their own lives. Many of the kids were forced to re-evaluate their value system as they learned important lessons about humility from the community around them. The experiences also gave the kids a rich understanding of the South African culture and political climate of the country, which was extremely impactful for them as they learned about many tragic and horrifying aspects of the local history. Hearing the community speak about gratitude despite hardship taught them lessons they could bring back home and apply to their own lives. According to one of the Club members who attended, David Ramirez, “one of the most important pieces of wisdom we took home was that we came to understand that we are all one in the same, we just live in different countries”.