Estate Living Digital Publication Issue 4 April 2015 | Page 60

INTEREST

60

Did you know that the letters in the
word ‘listen’ also spell the word ‘silent’?
Listening is one of the greatest qualities
man can possess, yet, so often, many
of us think, speak and act without doing
exactly that. Taking the time to listen can
achieve amazing results, for example, at
Lalela.
Quite literally, Lalela means ‘to listen’ in
Zulu and listening forms the core of this
thoroughly inspiring charity founded
by Andrea Kerzner. As per the mission
statement, ‘Lalela Project provides
educational arts to at risk youth, sparking
creative thinking and awakening the
entrepreneurial spirit’. Speaking in the
powerful and universal language of the
arts,thededicatedindividualsatLalelaaim
to exchange their ideas, art and musical
curriculum as a way to listen to one
another, and understand how to make
the world better, together. Having enjoyed
successful workshop programmes during
the 2010 Soccer World Cup, Lalela was
officially launched in January 2011 and
today works with seven local schools and
nearly 750 children from Grades 1-12,

all of whom are affected by extreme
poverty in the Hout Bay, Fishoek, Mfuleni
and Nyanga areas of Cape Town, in rural
KwaZulu-Natal and in Gauteng.
Step inside a classroom and you are
immediately humbled by the polite and
friendly children. Welcoming me into their
space, they even sing me the Lalela song,
play games with me in a circle and show
me the huge containers in the middle of
Hangberg that will soon be decorated as
a collaborative endeavour between the
community and Lalela with vibrant graffiti
artwork in honour of Human Rights Day
2015 under the guidance of Lalela Art
facilitators Hassan and Hussein Essop.
A politically unique boiling pot of different
races, cultures and social standing, Hout
Bay is somewhat deemed a microcosm
of South Africa. In the townships,
unemployment is high, as is drug and
alcohol abuse, teenage pregnancies and
gang warfare. “Children often come to us
from broken homes, where there is no
strong family structure and no male role
models. We work to break the barriers