MDANTSANE non-profit organisation, Project Khulisanani, is bringing sport to the people.
The NPO celebrated Youth Day by staging the Ezase Kasi Street Festival at the NU 1 spaza shops parking lot in Mdantsane. Many of the township’s youth participated in a host of The young people of Mdantsane gathered together, and played different sporting codes.
These included indigenous games and arts and cultural activities, such as, street soccer, netball, boxing, hopscotch, arm wrestling, tug of war, poetry, singing and dancing.
Founder of the Organisation founder, Bohlale Buzani, said Mdantsane was once a community of sporting folk, who represented the township and region in different sporting codes on a national scale.
“In the past few years, the community has seen a rise in alcohol and drug abuse; sports. Therefore , recreational activities and arts and culture play a crucial role in the development of the youth, because they teach them to be disciplined and to conduct themselves properly, that helps them to become in and out of the actual activity, therefore enabling them to be role models within the community”, he said.
Buzani said indicates the purpose of this event was for the youth to identify with the different activities, that will hopefully set them on the path to becoming role models in the community in future. help them to themselves within these different activities,so that they can grow up to be role models within the community. This is the first street festival that we have this year; we will be doing the other two later on in the year.” , as last year we had three street festivals.”
The stakeholders that were part of the event were; supported the event were Ekoneni Butcher, KFC from Taxi City branch and Mdantsane City Mall branch, department of sports recreations and arts and culture and Manyano Youth Development Drive.
“What we have next as the organisation is the launch of our Learning Centre at Bulumko Junior Primary School in NU1 Mdantsane ;where children will be helped with their homework and assisted with basic reading and writing skills,” Buzani said
“At this centre, children will also be helped with sports activities, arts and cultural activities and indigenous games upon completing homework.
“This will then contribute to the overall development of these children,” Buzani said.
