After traveling and working on an eco village in South America for one year, Janna Kretzmar arrived back in Cape Town at the beginning of 2006 with her heart set on one thing: to find a way to transform our schools. She began volunteering at Chapel Street Primary School in Woodstock with a vague outline of introducing more experiential and holistic education. With the support of their open minded principal, Mr Alexander, Janna set up an organic vegetable garden with Grades 4, 5 and 6 and ran guided meditations with Grades 1, 2 and 3.
As the year progressed so the project began to take shape. Health and Wellness was added to the mix because it seemed futile to teach children to reconnect with nature and with spirit if they were not taking care of themselves.
During the year Janna came into contact with many NGOs and volunteers who were doing amazing work in schools. However, she observed that once they left, the projects they had initiated were seldom maintained. Teachers just did not have the time or energy to sustain these extra initiatives.
Another problem was that NGOs were working independently in their specific areas and were experiencing many challenges. A possible obstacle seemed to be the lack of holistic interventions.
It was these observations that inspired Janna to create the model which later developed into the Earthchild Project. The initial model was to place a full time facilitator in a school whose role it would be to introduce and maintain holistic education. These initiatives would be complimented by the involvement of partnering organizations who are already specialists in their particular areas.
Carly Tanur, the director of Mamelani, an NGO who had helped set up the school vegetable garden, mentioned Janna's idea to one of their donors, Earthchild Clothing. They liked it and said they'd fund the first facilitator's salary.
A week later Janna met Nokuphiwo Jada, a perfect candidate for the role of a facilitator. Another week and they'd found the perfect school: Sakumlandela Primary in Khayelitsha. From there the project snowballed and within two months there were three facilitators, three schools, three donors and six partnering NGOs. And so it was that the Earthchild Project was born.
