Overview

In 1981 an Outreach Society was started at Bishops by Chaplain Henry Kirk and Hugh Fynn, and this became an Interact Club the following year, linking it to the Claremont Rotary Club.
The Bishops Interact Club is linked to Rotary International, and our parent club is Rotary Claremont. We are a club dedicated to social and community service and seek to uphold the ideals and goals of the Rotary organisation.

We want to engage with society, so for example, over many years, the Bishops Interact Club has been involved in outreach projects to Koeberg Primary, a school in Maitland that serves an extremely marginalised community. Many of the students are the sons and daughters of refugees, of the unemployed and those just struggling to make ends meet.

Outreach

Over many years, Bishops Interact Club has been involved with Koeberg Primary. This initially stemmed from a project initiated by Claremont Rotary in conjunction with the Stanley Grundy Chess Foundation. Through sponsorship from this Foundation, (filtered through Claremont Rotary) Bishops was able to provide chess equipment to Koeberg. For many years students from Koeberg Primary came through to Bishops on Thursday afternoons for chess coaching. Later, Bishops students went to Koeberg to coach and play chess with the children at Koeberg.

There have been many other points of contact between Bishops and Koeberg Primary over time, and it is in light of this history that the Bishops Interact Club would like to continue its involvement at Koeberg for the benefit of the students from both Koeberg and Bishops.

Further to a meeting with the Principal of Koeberg Primary Ms. Majiet, we now have an extensive outline of requirements from Koeberg, outlining where help is needed and in which areas Bishops can assist.

Outreach Projects to Koeberg Primary No. 1.

In response to a very generous offer from Rotary Claremont to provide funding for a dedicated Interact project that would involve both funding of materials and infrastructure, as well as extensive hands-on involvement by the Bishops Interact Club members, we propose a two-part project.

1.1 Development of Recycling at Koeberg in Partnership with Bishops.

Firstly, an area Ms. Majiet drew our attention to was the need to promote and develop recycling at Koeberg (starting with tins and plastic), something that would not only be a practical educational project for the students at the school, but also something Ms. Majiet, is keen to involve the local community in as well.

This project would dovetail particularly well with a parallel recycling project currently underway at Bishops. Our proposal for this project is to put in place a series of seven dedicated recycle stations around the premises at Koeberg Primary.

There are a number of advantages to this project. It is a project that Ms. Majiet would like to see implemented at Koeberg. It provides a very practical point of contact between the Bishops and Koeberg students such as:

• in terms of cooperation in the managing of the recycling projects at our respective schools
• sharing contact for the collection of recycled material
• for Bishops boys to visit Koeberg to promote and discuss recycling and environmental awareness
• to run joint workshops where the Bishops boys work with the Koeberg students in creating a school-wide and broader community advertising campaigns about recycling and environmental awareness
• to expand the project in the future to include glass, paper and cardboard recycling

Past Activities

The Annual “Fun Frenzy” event on the Frank Reid with our sponsoring Rotary Club, Claremont Rotary. Children between the ages of 5 and 13 came to this event from the townships of Khayalitsha, Gugulethu and Langa where they enjoy a fun-filled day, participating in games organised by the Bishops boys.

One of our main event was the annual One-to-One fun day for the mentally handicapped. In addition to running a stall as one of the entertainments of the day, Bishops Interact Club members were there to lend a hand, acting as friends to the mentally disabled children and adults who came to enjoy the day.

We continue to assist the St. Thomas’ Church Fikelela AIDS project, a project of the Anglican Church in South Africa. Members of our club go to the church once a month and pack parcels of food and basic necessities for families in Gugulethu that are affected by HIV/AIDS.

We have supplied a portable library to Koeberg Primary School in Maitland, and we are collecting books and other educational material, not only to fill the portable library so generously supplied by Rotary Claremont, but to continue working on this as a major project in order to develop and refurbish their school library/media centre.