CAPE TOWN - The new year will bring hope for change in the lives of Lavender Hill’s children, a community in Cape Town ridden with gangsterism and drugs, as a new youth oasis is expected on the very “battlefield” that tears the community apart.
Recovered drug addict and founder of the Lavender Hill Sports and Recreation Foundation, Mark Nicholson, revealed to IOL on Christmas Day that his mission is to not allow Lavender Hill’s children to go down the same path as he did and as is the case with many others in the community.
The youth oasis is set to be up and running by April or May 2022 and will boast a music studio, classrooms that will be container build, a netball court and soccer fields along with ablution facilities.
Plans of the youth oasis show an additional canteen and kitchen, dance studio and administration offices that will all be enclosed for safety.
Nicholson adds that a sustainable vegetable garden will also be introduced in the facility.
“The whole idea of the youth centre is to try and change our children’s lives around; our children have been distraught and very depressed.
“I’ve been a drug addict, I want to focus on kids not becoming drug addicts or not becoming a part of a gang,” he said.
R1.7 million has already been donated by the UK-based organisation, In Place Of War, which will be used for the refurbishment of containers, music studio and internet café.
However, R3m in funding is still being sought.
On Christmas Eve, Nicholson’s foundation handed out food parcels and party packets to scores of about 250 children on the very “battlefield” where the youth oasis is expected to be built.
The children were pictured being ecstatic for the goodies which were donated by The Springbok Rugby Legends.
A study titled Emergency Healthcare Needs in the Lavender Hill Suburb of Cape Town, South Africa: A Cross-sectional, Community-based Household Survey, which was published in 2020 by medical journal BMJ Open, found that just over 17% of participants had a matric certificate.
It also found a median household of five members, with participants’ median monthly income of R1000-R5000; 98.5% of participants rely solely on government health services, one-third of the them received at least one form of social grant, and almost 60% of working-age adults were unemployed.
The data was collected from over 600 households encompassing 2754 individuals in 2018 and does not consider the devastating impact the Covid-19 pandemic has had on the community.
The community was created during the Apartheid Era, “mainly built on sand, it served one purpose: to get coloured people away from the white population of Cape Town,” NGO Lavender6 states.
The social gap due to a lack of fatherhood in the community perpetuates recruitment to gangs, creating a vicious loop of violence and struggle.
IOL