Mandela Day in Monwabisi Park

A revamped bus rolled into the informal settlement of Monwabisi Park to educate and entertain the area's underprivileged children.

The colourful design on the exterior of the bus was painted by See-Saw-Do.

The bus was formerly a mobile library, now revamped into a multi-functional space that will serve three of Cape Town's informal settlements.

The Sikhula Sonke facilitators read the children stories about Nelson Mandela.

The bus made various stops around Monwabisi Park in order to reach out to as many groups of children as possible.

The interior of the bus now boasts shelves filled with books, sporting equipment, educational toys and posters.

Children marched towards the bus, singing songs.

Many of the children's parents cannot afford to send them to a creche. The Sikhula Sonke team ran early childhood development activities with them on the day.

Lyall Sprong from Thingking design studio ran impromptu workshops painting wooden blocks with the children.

The children got to keep the blocks, which were donated to day-care facilities in the community.

Sprong collected wooden offcuts from workshops in Cape Town and is currently exploring ways of turning waste into toys.

VPUU has helped to upgrade public areas in the settlement, facilitating the paving and lighting of main pedestrian walkways to create a safer environment.

One of the VPUU projects is the upgrading of 'emthonjenis' (isiXhosa for 'spring'), water collection points that have become public gathering spots. As the settlement has few amenities and public spaces, the area around some of the water taps has been renovated to include paving, benches, more durable taps and in some cases, trees.

The residents of Monwabisi Park live in shacks built on sandy dunes. The VPUU project has helped develop safer routes through the area in consultation with the community.

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Posted 21 Jul 14 By Design Indaba Design Activism • Urban & Landscape Design Design Indaba News / Do Tank News Comments

Part of the Project

Mandela Day

Design Indaba commemorated Mandela Day in Monwabisi Park, Khayelitsha, where it joined the Violence Prevention Through Urban Upgrading (VPUU) and Sikhula Sonke teams to launch a new bus that aims to make a difference to residents' lives.

The bus will be a communication and activation vehicle for social, learning and recreational programmes in the informal settlements of Monwabisi Park, Lotus Park in Gugulethu and the Heights in Lavender Hill. It was provided to VPUU by the Library and Information Services Department of the City of Cape Town, which previously used it as a mobile library. VPUU has upgraded the bus to become a dynamic icon that can move between the different areas as an extension of its “active boxes” concept (multifunctional spaces that act as a community centre, information point, safe point and service point for the provision of social, economic and institutional services).

Social enterprise See-Saw-Do decorated the exterior with a brightly coloured illustration that will enable the bus to stand out from a far distance as a marketing tool within the community. The interior was revamped with a lick of paint, new furniture, posters and flooring. Design Indaba donated books, games and equipment for early childhood development.

The VPUU bus made various stops in Monwabisi Park, whose residents live in shacks with no plumbing, built on sand dunes. The VPUU and Design Indaba staff worked with early childhood development facilitators from Sikhula Sonke, who read the children stories about Nelson Mandela and ran informal learning activities. Cricket kits and soccer balls were distributed for the children to play with and sandwiches were handed out.

Look through our gallery of images above to see how the day unfolded.