Children helping children – this was the result of Hoërskool Menlopark’s Care Week. The annual occasion sees Menlopark students raising funds for various organisations. This year, students raised R17 000 for Abraham Kriel Children’s Home Nylstroom (AKKN) – a beautiful testament to the power of youth. On Monday 16 September, Marlene de Villiers, AKKN’s spokesperson, visited the school, together with two of the home’s children. The visit was not only an opportunity to thank the students but also to expose them to a world beyond their own.

As Willem Botha, a maths teacher at the school and co-ordinator of the Care Committee, explains, “In a community such as ours, we are incredibly privileged and don’t often see disadvantage in our immediate environment. So, I believe it’s important for our children to realise that there is a great deal of need and a great deal of pain in the outside world… For us, doing fundraising creates awareness among our students. Especially during events such as Monday’s, when AKKN and the other organisations we support come to share their stories, this helps to broaden the horizons of Menlopark’s children.”

Indeed, the Care Week initiative is entirely student-driven. As Willem explains, it’s the students who reach out to organisations, organise events, and decide how much they’ll contribute from their own pockets. “Even Monday’s event was organised by the children.”

For Marlene de Villiers, this kind of proactive engagement by students is deeply impactful. “At the children’s home we have 170 children, who come to us traumatised and without hope for the future. I think you can imagine how it would feel to be taken from your parents’ home, where the situation was already difficult, and placed in a strange environment where you know no one. It is then our job to develop those children to reach their full potential and to give them a second chance at life,” Marlene told Menlopark’s students on Monday. “I want to thank you for helping us give these children a second chance at life – we have so many success stories!”

At AKKN, we celebrate the powerful bonds between the students of Menlopark and the children of our home. These are bonds of empathy, care, and a deep appreciation for the privileges and pain we are each assigned in life!