WYNBERG FAMILIES
Wynberg Families has been running successfully at WBJS for some years now. A Wynberg family consists of one boy from each grade from Grades 1 to 7. These 7 boys, who form this family, meet about two or three times a term. The Grade 7 learner in the family leads his Wynberg family and this gives each Grade 7 boy the opportunity to develop leadership skills.
Wynberg family sessions are aimed to be fun and the boys really enjoy them. The boys discuss issues such as manners/respect, friends, bullying, etc. In addition to this, they play games and have chat sessions, where boys can voice concerns they have or issues they may have in their lives.
The purposes of Wynberg families are as follows:
1. To give each Grade 7 boy a chance to develop his leadership skills.
2. To give each boy in the school a sense of belonging at WBJS.
3. To discuss important issues with peers, without any adult input.
4. To have fun.
EARLY ACT
Our Early Act Club being the service pillar of our school has now been in existence for about 12 years. Boys are given the opportunity to demonstrate their goodwill and care for others by being involved in the club. The club engages the learners in character-building activities and engages them in opportunities to build leadership skills. The boys are motivated to be part of activities to the benefit of their school and local communities. We are sponsored by and work closely with Wynberg Rotary who assist us with some of our distribution activities.
Some of our projects are:
Collecting sandwiches regularly which are then distributed by the Salvation Army.
Winter Warmer drives in which we collect and distribute blankets and socks to local communities.
Collecting sports shoes for the learners of Zeekoevlei Primary School.
Knitting for Mandela Day takes place during the course of the second and third terms. Our club members learn the skill and benefits of knitting. Wynberg families are also motivated to knit and donate knitted items which are donated to charity.
Annually we support the Sunflower fund by participating in bandana day. Thereafter we donate our bandanas to an organization who makes baby quilts and other handy baby items which is then donated to the Cotlands Children’s Home in Somerset West.
We also collect used stationery at the end of the school year.
Early Act club boys also do a bob-a-job activity in support of our book week in the third term. The funds from this activity are used to purchase new books for startup libraries in underprivileged areas.
We have an annual visit to Douglas Murray Old Age home in which we take along care pack gifts at Christmas time and entertain the residents with fun lucky draws and music.
We have linked up with an initiative called The Benjamin Project which is a non-profit mentorship project that mentors young boys through sports programmes. We strive to support them and engage in contact between their learners and ours.
These are a few of the many projects that we have engaged in recently, and we hope that it will leave a mark in the hearts of our learners by inspiring care, respect, empathy, responsibility, compassion and tolerance for others.
RECYCLING
In bringing awareness to environmental issues we find ourselves merging with our service pillar. Many of the environmental activities in which we participate, allow us to engage with different social issues. Our ultimate goal is to nurture the learners to become environmentally and socially responsible, learning to hold themselves accountable for their actions. As a school, we continue to strive to be positive role models.