The Upstart group consists of six members, one black male, one white male and four black females. These members range from the range of sxteen to eighteen years of age. They have been chosen from certain schools within Grahamstown such as Nombulelo High School and PJ Olivier. These schools vary in language and income level.
At half past two my colleague and I travelled seperate cars to fetch the pupils. Once we picked them up from their individual schools we took the pupils to the Journ department. What I noticed from the start was how shy the new pupils were, and I realised I would have to make a constnt effort to make the workshops as relaxed and fun as possible. In the beginning we let each person say their name and how old they were and tell a "random fact" about themselves, this slightly hlped to make the members relax. We wanted to get more interaction between the team so we started playig an nformal game to set the mood. Ths helped dramatically.
One characteristic I learnt in the next excersize changed my way to approach issues for the futre. We asked the team to write down the idividual things they loved and hated. Their social backgrouns became very obvious here. For example the boys mentioned loving rugby while some of the girls illustrated they loved helping their mothers or cooking. There was a definate diverge in interests in other aspects to, and I realise this may be an aspect we will have to tackle in the future.
After this excersize we asked all the members to write down as many aspects they feel affects their immediate society, the following aspects came up often:
Substance abuse: mainly smoking and alcohol.
Teenage pregnancy
Crime in and out of the schooling sphere
Hiv and AIDS