Vanderful / Seeds of Hope ODV
2019 - 2024
Week 3 – Community Mapping & Surf Wax
A busy week for our Expressive Arts workshops as they took part in a crucial activity; ‘Community Mapping’. The boys in Craftsmanship learnt how to make organic surf wax with locally sources ingredients.
Vanderful ‘Community Mapping’
Our busiest day at the project is Gutsakisana’s original day; a Tuesday. There was no better time to implement this exercise. We began the week with team building games, which helped highlight the natural leaders of the group.
We seperated them into 4 teams and outlined the most important aspects of how to map their community. Each group named their team and set off on a journey around Tofo’s town centre.
The ‘Giraffa‘ team sat down and took it in turns to draw aspects of their map, ‘TofoTofo‘ group observed first and instructed one member to draw. The ‘Africa‘ team took it slow and steady; whereas the ‘Winners‘ group, rather went ahead and preferred to jot down notes then redraw later on!
‘Maps are the clothespins; tools for hitching children’s lives to their places’.
David Sobel, 1998.
After we explored Tofo, the children completed their maps back in TofoTofo restaurant. Each team then discussed the most important areas of their maps for People, Animals and the Environment. After they identified these points of interest, they then discussed how they could be improved.
The morning session children took part in the same activity on Thursday. Team ‘Violette‘ and ‘Accessory‘ added more inspiring ideas to the table. Amongst more team building and improvising; each child cast a vote for their favourite topic. Next week the votes will be colated and revealed to the children!
Below you can see all of the teams’ ideas…which one would you choose?
Vanderful Surf Accessories
This week Rafito, Jorge and Tony needed to oil their boards twice before they can be used in the water.
So for the rest of the week, they focused their attention on making and creating organic surf wax which they will retail at The Surf Shack, in Tofo.
All the ingredients they used are locally sourced. The beeswax came from a bee keeping project in Morrumbene. This project is run by Japanese volunteers who teach locals ethical and sustainable beekeeping.
Coconut oil can be found everywhere in Mozambique (there’s no shortage of coconut palms) and a little lemongrass essential oil was added to give it a fresh fragrance! The boys wrapped the wax in the local Capulana fabric and they were good to go.
With support from Alison and Dave; the boys will now sell this wax to local surfers and tourists, setting aside some of the profit so that they can buy more local ingredients. Good luck boys!
Give children the chance to play.
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Don’t stop, don’t look back, only to gather straglers. You two ARE making a difference!