BOXGIRLS Atlantis held a workshop to teach the girls useful presentation skills in January 2010. Read the feature report of our committed supporter Heidi:

 

 

 

"We - Professor Cameron and me - drive North - out of Cape Town, leave the Mountain behind. The country becomes flat now, the fields are harvested and brown from the summer heat. After a while we use a left turn off the highway N7, following a sign to Atlantis, then a right turn into a road, where we drive under huge trees.

 

When the power lines following the street meet others from different directions, we approach a transformer station. We arrive in Atlantis, a settlement for black and coloured people. We find the car that guides us to the boxing hall. On the way we pass fragile wooden shacks - hard to believe that these are homes for whole families - no running water, no electricity. No streets, only paths between the shacks. Coming to a group of trees we turn left and stop in front of a shipping container having a door in the middle and two windows, the glass broken. This is the boxing hall.

 

Through the slightly opened door we see the girls sitting in a circle on turned over bottle boxes. Seeing us they come out and give us a heartily welcome. They are between 12 and 16 years old, beautiful girls, clean and nicely dressed with carefully made up hair. We meet also Kelvin the coach.

 

After a short discussion with the "Team" the workshop starts inside the boxing hall. We all sit now in a circle on our boxes. Cameron introduces the ?Team?: Everybody knows Professor Cameron: Also Nick, student of physical education at the UWC, who is responsible for the coordination of the whole project, is known to everybody. Laureen, Nadja, and Nomtha, also  Phys. Ed. Students at UWC, an me as a novice complete the "Team". This is followed by explaining the program of today: In small groups we will have to work on a few problems, and each group will present the results to the total group.

 

The topics of the problems are:   

                    1. Present yourself

                    2. Collect a crowd to present

                    3. Prepare a topic to present

                    4. Draw a map of your community

 

We get the smaller groups just by counting - one, two, three, four. Nick and I are responsible for a group of three: Bongiswa, Gifts, and Nitombie. We move our boxes into one corner of the container. We discuss our first problem: How can we present ourselves, our work, our goals to other people successfully. We discuss about body posture and body language, the gestures - how to use arms and hands, facial expression, movements of the eyes.

 

We talk about each special element and the girls practice it. Bongiswa is already pretty self-confident and shows good performance. The other two girls are a bit shy at he beginning but realise soon that with each repetition they become safer. After practicing body posture and movement we direct our attention to the voice. Again we start discussing then each girl gets the chance to practice - the others listening and giving hints for correction. The time is over then. And we gather outside the container. Now every girl presents herself to the whole group: Name, age, name of her school, class and: "I am a boxer!"

 

We stay outside for the second problem to solve, make a big circle taking our hands. Cameron starts shouting her name loudly. I am the next one standing left of her. I shout my name. One after the other is doing this then. A few have to repeat to shout louder. Next we present ourselves again, to train our voices. The next task is more difficult. We leave the circle and stand somewhere. The "speaker" has to collect the crowd for his speech. How to do that? Everybody gets a try. Then we discuss: Make a loud enough and special noise ? shout, clap, whistle. Next step: people are busy chatting. How can I get them to listen? That needs creativity. We see wonderful performances. Nomtha shows a wonderful dance to attract attention. We discuss again. What are the most important things? We do it again. New ideas. It becomes fun and big applause for some of the becoming leaders.

 

After that the small groups walk into the container again. We have paper and pencil now. The next problem is to prepare a topic for presentation: The topic for our group is: "Why do I love boxing?" We ask the girls to write down their ideas. They start enthusiastically to write kind of novels. We interrupt and start discussing, why it might be important for girls to box. We collect a bunch of ideas, then the girls start writing again: what is import for each single on: To be strong, to be fit, to feel safe. But also: to be in a group and have good communication in the group. It gives the chance to avoid drug and alcohol problems. As well: to learn more about boxing, to learn about oneself, become a coach perhaps later - and to become famous perhaps - those are the goals. After we collected all these goals there is the problem, how to write all this down in a meaningful way.  Bongiswa has the idea with the mindmap [MINDMAP]. Everybody draws one. Now the elements of the mindmap have to be written down in a way so that there is access to them during the speech without looking at them all the time. There is not so much time left to practice the speech and we have lots to repeat from the first problem ? but that was the purpose.

Now it is time for lunch. The students get the food out of the trunk of their car: sandwiches, bananas, water and juice. Before we start eating we come together in the circle and one of the girls has to say the grace. After that the girls sit together in small groups, chat and eat.

While we eat a very skinny woman approaches the group. She asks for something to eat. We do not want to give her food because then more hungry people might come. We try to explain that the food is only for the girls because they have to work. She does not want to understand. At the end we give her a banana, and I give her my tuna sandwich - I don't like fish. She leaves us slowly.

Still sitting together to eat we ask the girls one after the other to present her prepared speech and we take videos. That is new for the girls. Again a few are self-confident like Bongiswa - she had done this before. Others are very shy; they get into a muddle, giggle and have forgotten everything they had just learned. But everybody gets encouragement and at the end gets a big applause.

After lunch there is the choice between continuing with further theory or have some practice. They decide for some more theory: To prepare a second topic for a speech. This time the topics are: "What would I like as a professional career, and why?"; "What do I like living in Atlantis, what do I not like?"; "What would I like to change in my community?"; "How would I like to change and improve the boxing hall?".

In the old or new small groups we go back into the container and start again: collect ideas, etc. We leaders go around and help, if it is necessary. After most of them are ready we take them out again for the presentations. Again a few are very self-confident, other still very cautious. But everybody improved the performance. There are wonderful presentations. It is amazing how deep the thoughts of these girls are about their training facility, their future and their community. They present their ideas in a very convincing manner. We take videos again.

 

 

But now it is time for some boxing. Cameron brings two double pairs - red and blue each - and two pairs of pads, the gloves to hit for the coaches - boxing starts. Kelvin takes the pads and the girls step up one by one and box him. The coach gives correcting hints. Then Cameron herself takes on the second pair of pads and a second group starts boxing. By all the shouting, correcting advices, spur up shouts, and the "plops" of the gloves hitting the pads it becomes vivid and loud. Before we finish Bongiswa gives one of the students an introductory boxing lesson. She is doing that very well.

After this "cooling" warm up we start the last problem. The girls have to draw a map of the area they live in or where their school is. In this map they have to mark those places where they like to be, where not, and which places are safe and which not. The goal is to compare these maps with those that the girls will draw months or years later and look, if anything has changed. Paper and pencils are distributed again, small groups or single persons start to draw. The girls seem to have fun. The male youth counsellors representing the settlement ? Bulelami and Sandile, who have joined us in the mean time and Kelvin as well ask for paper and pencil and start to draw as well.  Now streets and houses, shops, malls and parks are marked on the papers ? the papers become filled up. Sometimes the girls forget the goal and have to be reminded to mark the dangerous etc. spots. When we tell them we want to take pictures from the maps, they start over again to do a fair copy. Everybody draws eagerly and almost does not want to stop. Finally we get a pile of interesting drawings. Talking about the results we get to know that everybody agrees that the most dangerous spot in the settlement is the Dura Park. There nobody wants to go - definitely not alone - because assaults and rapes happen there every day.

It takes a while until everybody is ready and content with the results. We collect the maps and ask the girls to come outside for a concluding discussion. We form a big circle again, take each other by our hands and Cameron says farewell. After the official "goodbye" the girls come closer and each one gives us a hug. That feels good. They know we will be back two days later for their training, an information session with their parents, and a dinner together.

After the girls have left, Kelvin and the Team drive to "Kentucky Fried Chicken" for a short discussion. We talk about the workshop and find it was good and successful.  Then Kelvin guides us out of Atlantis to the highway. On the way back we go through the whole workshop again and think about what was good and what could be done better next time. But in general we think it was a good workshop and later we fall into our beds tired but content."