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Zeni Thumbadoo

Location: Durban, South Africa

Biography
I trained as a social worker and in my second working year worked in a Children’s Home where I fell in love with residential care. I then did the entire child and youth care courses offered, joined the National Association of Child Care Workers (NACCW), pored over our local child care journals – and then fell in love with child and youth care work! After 10 years at Lakehaven Child and Youth Care Center, a children’s home, my next inspiring work experience was a contract with the NACCW promoting the transformation of the C&YC system in South Africa. Here I had the opportunity to design innovative models for the inclusion of C&YCWs in new programs for children in different settings. This started my passion for model development and now as one of the directors of the NACCW I am responsible for the development and replication of the Isibindi Model – focused on training unemployed rural women in an accredited training in C&YCW and deploying them in the context of the aids orphan crisis to work with child headed households and vulnerable families. The growth and impact of the Isibindi Model represents an exciting innovation for C&YCW in South Africa and for Africa as a whole – perhaps the birth of an African interpretation of C&YCW! This is my current passion, but my work in advocacy, policy development, teaching and ongoing model development continues. I am completing my C&YC Masters degree under the competent “hanging-in-with-me” support and supervision of Dr Thom Garfat.

How I came to be in this field
My initiation into C&YCW came through my work at Lakehaven Children’s Home and my love for residential care. This is where I met some outstanding C&YCWs – Sabitha Samjee, Himla Makhan and Dolly Naidoo. In an Apartheid South Africa the NACCW created a safe space for the integration of the separated and unequal circumstances of C&YC practitioners. Debates, discussions, training, teaching and understanding the diversity of our painful experiences in C&YC bonded us in our own new NACCW rainbow nation in those hard old days. This opportunity created my sense of belonging to C&YCW and fuller integration into the then racially split South African society.

A favorite saying
“When there is an encounter with another, when there is mutuality, when there is presence, when there is giving and receiving, and both are changed in that encounter; that is the moment when you can begin to move toward transformation. Don’t let the word transformation scare you. You just allow what you have met to change you. You look back at it with different eyes. Now you are able to look at the rest of your life with different eyes. “ Richard Rohr

A few thoughts about child and youth care

• C&YCW brings alive the magic of working in the moment and the opportunity to make meaning at the cutting edge of issues – as they are happening!

• The parallel process of personal growth to be found in C&YCW is important. In South Africa through the Isibindi model we have seen the transformation and healing of community-based C&YCWs through the training, understanding, and power of the C&YC experience. The wounded healer is a useful term to help understand the impact of C&YCW in the lives of many South African CYCWs – who themselves live in indescribably difficult circumstances.

• Watch out for the development of an African application and interpretation C&YCW emerging passionately and proudly from South Africa.

An Isibindi C&YCW arrives early and cooks a hot breakfast for children from a child headed family in rural South Africa. Just this, in the context of HIV/AIDS and poverty is a triumph for C&YCW.

Last thing I read, watched, heard, which I would recommend to others
I read novels as a way of relaxing, and recommend from this year’s reading, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini – a topical book on the war in Afghanistan and the struggle of women in another culture. And I have read the entire series of the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith – for the reflective practice of a Mama in Botswana as she solves ordinary community mysteries.

A favorite Child and Youth Care experience
Akesh seemed to find me too busy to have a long, deep and considered discussion with him. So he came back from school, baked a cake, made a pot of tea, arranged for the C&YCW to entertain the other children out of the cottage and called the busy Zeni to have tea with him. I dropped all other pressing work in celebration of this magical moment. And we talked to his hearts content. Wonderful work in a flexible children’s home! And the cake was excellent!

Grief work with memory boxes – an Isibindi story. Sbo sits with the teenage boys looking at the family photos gathered and placed there – memories of mother who is no longer around because of HIV/AIDS. She sees a picture of mother in Mother’s Union Church uniform and starts a conversation about religion. She discovers that the boys lost contact with their church during the long hard years but now looking at the photo would like to go back to church. Sbo traces the pastor who is excited to have the children back. There are big plans to go to church on Sunday – a new routine, a new social network, maybe even friends? And Sbo arrives early on Sunday to iron their church clothes (they must make a good impression at church!). She sends them off and makes them a hot lunch so there is a meal awaiting them when they return from church. A community child and youth care worker working with a child headed family in rural South Africa.

A few thoughts for those starting out

• Tenacity – understand the work and the importance of never giving up. Hanging-in is critical.

• See possibilities and potential in everything and allow the creativity to flow as you respond uniquely to each child and each issue in C&YCW.

• Work with a parallel personal plan for your own development and growth. Personalize the information and material (what does it mean to me, for me?).

• Integrate indigenous knowledge into child and youth care practice within a child rights framework – adapt and make personal meaning of C&YC theory.

A writing of my own
Exploring the role of community child and youth care workers in South Africa: Where to in developing competencies?
https://www.cyc-net.org/cyc-online/CYC-Online-oct2008-zeni.html

Influences on my work
I was born in Mandeni – in rural KwaZulu Natal where my parents spent 5 years as school principal and teacher in a local village school. My early childhood experiences and memories, their passion for community development work in the context of an educational program has influenced my passion for work in rural communities. My experience at a wonderful children home functioning effectively under the leadership of Bala Mudaly was a transforming experience. South Africa is a wonderful country in which to innovate and do new and different things for children. We have an unusual opportunity to influence work done nationally with children – and opportunity that I hold gratefully with both hands.

My sons, so different and so precious have influenced my growth in the practice of C&YCW. Other powerful influences are Merle Allsopp (for ongoing support, guidance and affirmation), Lesley Du Toit (for creating the opportunity for me to realize my passion for conceptual innovation in C&YC practice), Thom Garfat (for structuring my thinking – and making me write this bio!) and Pieter Friese and the Danish team (for bringing creativity into community C&YCW in South Africa). My spiritual inspiration comes from Native American teachings – the medicine wheel. We are all connected – in relational C&YCW!