Sarah Hudson and Erin Runnalls

Children’s Rights Working Group(South Africa)

The Pinocchio Crèche was proposed to us as a project for the Children’s Rights Working Group by Professor Noah Novogrodsky. Six years ago, Professor Novogrodsky negotiated a lease – and new home –for the Pinocchio Crèche in a former municipal lawn bowling club during his International Human Rights Fellowship for the Amy Biehl Foundation Trust in Cape Town. The Pinocchio Crèche began as a project of the Domestic Workers Association twenty-two years ago. Maggie Shongwe, a domestic worker from the age of nine, saw the enormous need for a crèche that would accommodate the needs of working parents, particularly women, and their children. The Crèche currently has space for up to forty children between ten months and five years of age, and continues to be run by Maggie, her daughter Helen, and one other caregiver. The Crèche’s philosophy is that the key to a child’s development is to ensure that children are able to play and grow as children for as long as possible, especially in a world where life forces many children to grow up far too quickly.The Crèche aims to achieve this goal by providing a safe, secure, supportive and stimulating environment where children are free to grow to their full potential. The Pinocchio Crèche is thus significant in international human rights terms for its ability to provide a safe haven and educational preparation to disadvantaged children, many of whose parents commute from the townships into the Green Point and Sea Point areas of Cape Town for work. The children of the Pinocchio Crèche are given a remarkable chance at a brighter future by entering into schools in the Green Point area where they have a 64% chance of meeting grade level requirements, as opposed to the 2% chance they would have had if they remained in the township schools.

Since September 2005, Professor Novogrodsky has supervised the Children’s Rights Working Group. With the eight other law student members and the three Rotman MBA student members of the Working Group, we spent the2005-2006 school year developing a business plan for the Pinocchio Crèche, nominating Helen Shongwe for the Reebok Human Rights Award, and hosting a Wine & Cheese fundraising event atthe University of Toronto Early Learning Centre.We also made several important and supportive contacts, which include childcare specialists in Torontoand Shearman & Sterling LLP in New York. The latter's involvement is focused primarily on lobbying FIFA for corporate funding in light of the World Cup 2010 being held in South Africa.

We arrived in Cape Town at the beginning of July equipped to hit the ground running – we had funds, a skeleton business plan, and a template of Canadian Early Childhood Development policies. However, we quickly learned that international human rights work is never a hundred metre dash, and within a few days we encountered the challenges of delay, miscommunication, and divergentvalues and priorities.

Maggie Shongwe has a huge heart and a beautiful vision for the future of the Pinocchio Crèche; however,the greatest challenge during our internships was negotiating a shared appreciationofthe steps necessary to achieve that vision. From the beginning, ourmandate was always to ensure the sustainability of the important social service that the Crècheprovides.In South Africa, we took our lead from the Department of Social Services & Poverty Alleviation’s “Strategic Framework for Integrated Provincial Early Childhood Development Provision 2005-2014”, which states that “[q]uality of provision is a key determinant of the effectiveness of the ECD service. Aspects associated with quality include the sustainability of the facility, infrastructure and practitioner qualifications.” Moving towards the future sustainability of the Crèche requires a legal foundation,an administrative infrastructure, and financial accountability.We made a great deal of progress during our internships towards negotiating a shared vision of the Pinocchio Crèche’s future development. During our internships in Cape Town, we worked with the Crèche to:

Legal Foundation

(i)Research South Africa’s children’s rights-related legislation and guidelinesfor Early Childhood Development centres.

(ii)Collect detailed information about both the Crèche and theenrolled families.

(iii)Write a report on the current status of the Crèche for the Ministry of Social Welfare, which monitors registered centres and considers requests for government subsidies.

Administrative Infrastructure

(iv)Draft a comprehensive policy manual and paperwork templates to bring the Crèche into compliance with South African guidelines. The purpose of the Pinocchio Crèche Policy Manual is to outline the current policies and practices of the Pinocchio Crèche, as well as to provide a guide for future developments. The Policy Manual may be made available to any interested persons or organisations: parents, employees, volunteers, board members, community partners, the South African government, and donors.

(v)Contact the Crèche’s assigned social worker at the Ministry of Social Welfare to reinvigorate the Crèche’s links to the South African government’s practitioner certification and development programs.

Financial Accountability

(vi)Establish an accountable financial structure and recruit a volunteer bookkeeper through the Cape Town Volunteer Centre. The volunteer bookkeeper will visit the Crèche on a bi-weekly basis for the purposes of generating monthly budget sheets and annual financial statements.

(vii)Plan for future short, medium and long-term fundraising efforts.

With the funds raised in Canada at the Wine & Cheese event, we were able to address the Crèche’s most pressing short-term needs. Upon our arrival, we were pleased to find that the security and maintenance needs of the Crèche were not as dire as we had feared, due to a recent donation made by a corporation in the local area. What we found, however, was that the Crèche was in desperate need of a stimulating outdoor play space for the children. With the Wine & Cheese funds, we were able to order a custom designed, sturdy and durable play structure, and purchase supplies for a sandpit, which we built ourselves!These outdoor additions will contribute greatly to the children’s development, beginning with the enhancement of underdeveloped motor skills and coordination. The Wine & Cheese donations also helped to address the Pinocchio Crèche’s other prioritized needs, including a washing machine (matched by the gift of a second-hand dryer from a private donor), cot/playpen/change table, and toilet training accommodations.

We were also able to broaden the Pinocchio Crèche’s community network and presence. We enlisted students from a local high school to paint an outdoor sign for the Crèche to raise the community'sawareness of its existence.With the enthusiasm and goodwill of the Camps Bay High School Principal, art teacher and students, the Crèche received a large, colourful outdoor sign that is visible from the Main Road. We hosted a party at the Crèche to celebrate the erection of this sign, where a reporter from the Atlantic Sun newspaper came to report on the new developments at the Crèche.

The Children’s Rights Working Group will continue to address these needs of the Pinocchio Crèche into the 2006-2007 school year, particularly through the development of a fundraising package to be sent to prospective donors in South Africa and internationally.

To round off our internship experience in Cape Town, we also volunteered for the Christine Revell Children’s Home and Black Sash. Christine Revell is a Children’s Home forup to forty children under the age of six who have been abandoned, abused or orphaned by HIV/AIDS. One day a week, we took two to threechildren onan outing in Cape Town. These children would otherwise not get many chances to leave the home or receive the one-on-one attention that they need. Black Sash was a woman’s resistance organisation during apartheid, well-known for documenting the names of the victims of apartheid as presented before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This organisation has sincereinvented itself to address the needs of the disadvantaged in the new South Africa by serving as a legal aid clinic. Much likeour work at Downtown Legal Services in Toronto, we had the opportunity to observe client interviews and assist with client management, specifically by following up with social grant applications.

Needless to say, our internships were both challenging and enriching learning experiences. Our ups and downs were representative of everyday life in South Africa generally, which is filled with examples of both struggle and hope. It is also one of the most beautiful places in the world and two months of living in Cape Town made for many memories – climbing to the top of Table Mountain; the Camps Bay and Clifton beaches; the vineyards in Franschoek and Stellenbosch; the desert wildflowers in Namaqualand; the whales in Hermanus Bay; and, most of all, the faces of children that we will never forget.