By Joe-Chintha Garises
KEETMANSHOOP, July 02 – The Children’s Movement Namibia held a boot camp in Keetmanshoop to teach the youth self-sustainability.
The boot camp, which was the brainchild of Keetmanshoop members of the movement, was held from 27 June-01 July 2022.
The aim of the camp was to equip the youngsters with skills like sewing, radio and television production website designing, coding and video editing.
National co-ordinator for the movement, Shandre Feris said besides the skills training, the children were divided into groups to take care of cleaning the youth resource centre where they were hosted and to prepare their own meals.
The movement works with clubs from four schools of P.K De Villiers, Suiderlig, J. A Nel and Keetmanshoop Junior whose pupils attended the camp.
There is no age restriction for club members with the youngest being 16 years and the oldest member 28 years.
“The Children’s Movement has six principles that we go by – respect for yourself, respect for the environment, respect for others, self-sustainability, critical thinking and participatory democracy and we also try to install them into the kids when we do stuff,” Feris said.
“We also taught them to be entrepreneurs so they can make a living for themselves from the skills they are taught,” she added.
“We also went on hiking as means of exercising and had a great view of Keetmanshoop from the top,” she said.
The youngsters were awarded certificates of attendance at the end of the camp that was mainly to entertain, inform and educate them.
“The certificates are to show that they had training from the Children’s Movement,” Feris explained.
