New Construction Adventures in Fish Hoek

GVI Cape Town has seen some exciting changes in the past two weeks as we have begun our first construction workshops in Fish Hoek! Similar in objective yet strikingly unique to our educare and healthcare projects, we aim to better the living and working environments of our community partners by performing minor repairs, cleaning and organizing, or building new structures.

The first week threw up a lot of obstacles, but coming into the second week, I am confident that our sole, brave, pioneering construction volunteer and I have things figured out. In only a few days, we managed to build (from scratch) an enormous 1.8m x 1.8m shelving unit for use at the Hope Centre. These cubbies will provide much needed storage to create a clutter-free learning environment! Additionally, we repaired broken and replaced missing floorboards in the Wendy House.

Over the next week, we plan to replace the wall to the bathroom at the Hope Centre (which the children lovingly busted a hole through), and lay vinyl flooring and insert wall hooks for book bag organisation at Kiddie’s Corner. Although these all may be seemingly small projects, they both individually and collectively make an enormous impact with our community partners.

If you’re looking for a way to get your hands dirty, spice up a longer-term volunteer trip, or see tangible evidence of how great an impact you make to these communities, I’d encourage you to try the construction workshops! (Besides, on what other projects do you get to play with power tools?)

Arden Lowndes – Medical & Construction Coordinator

New Construction Adventures in Fish Hoek