Johannesburg - On Saturday, August 1, 1936, Dorothy Reece opened the door of her little four-bedroomed home in Mayfair, Joburg. On the doorstep was an abandoned baby.
She didn’t hesitate, but picked it up and took it inside.
Reece, born on Christmas Day 1892, was an American missionary, but the foundling changed her life forever.
By 1942, she was looking after 600 children, all of them abandoned, as well as giving hope to a whole range of unwed mothers, caught up in a world at war.
She died in 1967 with few material possessions but with the knowledge that she had established an organisation dedicated to the welfare of children; whether unwanted or not, just desperate but with the hope of being united with a loving family.
Next year Cotlands, the organisation she founded, will celebrate its 80th anniversary.
It’s no longer in Mayfair; “Granny” Reece quickly outgrew that with her babies, and the next house in Kenilworth.
When she retired in 1960, she immediately began work raising funds to build a special baby sanctuary in Turffontein, in the south of Joburg, where the Cotlands head office remains to this day.
It’s no longer an orphanage and it’s not a Hospice for Aids babies – because there’s no need for either.
In 1996 Cotlands changed its focus in the face of the Aids pandemic. A paediatric intensive care unit was built as the babies died in their droves every week.
Today the overwhelming sadness is gone, in its place the laughter of children, bookshelves of toys covering the old oxygen feeding lines, playrooms for early childhood development (ECD) where the dormitories once stood for the unwanted babies.
As Cotlands’ Lois Moodley explains, the turning point came in 2002, after the home was able to get ARVs freely from Chris Hani Baragwanath. Before then, in the spirit of founder Matron Reece, the critically needed drugs had been bought and paid for privately – sometimes by the staff.
“Almost immediately, the deaths started drying up. Cotlands effectively just became an orphanage of 70 children, but once a baby becomes a toddler they’re almost impossible to adopt,” says Moodley.
The Cotlands management called in experts to find out where the greatest need was. Their answer was unequivocal: early childhood development – within a family, not an institution. From there the decision was simple; close down the orphanage, which took place in 2012.
Today, two groups of 25 infants each get a four-hour session twice a week at Cotlands.
They get breakfast and lunch and the chance to play under instruction – and observation. Fantasy play (one aspect of the session), explains Moodley, allows them the opportunity to play-act roles in the adult world, like being a firefighter or police officer, and give social workers the chance to pick up if the play acting is revealing signs of abuse.
“It’s literally awakening the child’s cognitive development. You know there was a study by an American academic which showed that ECD can reduce, though never remove, the effects of foetal alcohol syndrome?
“And it’s not just play, did you know that cooking and baking are foundation skills for learning science?”
Cotlands is a pioneer in the sphere of non-centre-based ECD: ECD operations in the area are also able to come there to rent out the facilities, but the centre’s other key function is to train the ECD facilitators or “elves” as they are known, who come to Turffontein every Friday to be briefed on the next week’s education theme, pick up the correct play tool box before returning to the inner city, Soweto, Olievenhoutbosch and Turffontein itself.
The nursing sisters, who once laboured to ensure their charges died as peacefully as possible, now work preventively.
The problem with foreign kids is that without the correct paperwork, they can’t access proper medical and psychological care, or get their inoculations.
Today Cotlands operates in six provinces and is involved in a massive pilot project in North West. The aim is to train more elves, create and train daycare moms to be fully licensed, and roll out the unique toy library across the country to children who otherwise would have nothing to play with and stimulate their minds.
“The best thing is for kids to be raised in communities, not in institutions, and get properly equipped for school,” she says and, harking back to the founder’s ethos: “Get young girls to make smarter choices and for the community to have fewer abandoned babies.”
* Cotlands is always in need of help; financial, donations or volunteers.
You can donate your birthday money by asking family and friends to give the money they would have spent on gifts for you, to Cotlands.
You can make Cotlands the beneficiary on your “My School” card – they want to get 67 people to do this by Madiba’s birthday.
You can volunteer to spend time there learning to make toys for the toy library out of recycled goods – and do this as part of your 67 minutes for Mandela. It’s also a great team-building initiative.
Go to www.cotlands.org.za to find out more.
The Star