Edition 1.3, 10th December 1998

 

PCB Technologies - Milkyway Internet Café
Outing to Tswaing Crater
6th December 1998

 

The MilkyWay Internet Café is located in the Yeoville community, which borders on inner city areas such as Hillbrow. As part of a broad program to promote literacy in the Internet and information technology with this needy community, the MilkyWay is open house every Sunday between 10h00 and 16h00 to the under-16 children of the area. A similar scheme is operative on a Friday night for youth aged 16 to 19 years.

Under the supervision of Stacey Coconas, the Café has become a buzzing hive of youthful activity on a Sunday, with a queue starting outside often as early as 07h00. Children have to book time, and are allowed up to two hours to explore cyberspace to their hearts content.

December is the time of the year most companies splash our on some sort of year-end function for their staff. In the past, the MilkyWay's parent company, PCB Technologies has been no exception.

However, this year, much of what would have been spent on such a function was diverted to an outing for the group of children that frequent the Café on a Sunday. A bus was hired a group of children from the Johannesburg inner city area were taken out on a day long adventure to the Tswaing Crater Park, north of Pretoria.

This is a 200 000 year-old meteorite impact crater and is one of the best preserved in the world. It is also a nature reserve and a Nguni cattle research station. For more details on Tswaing, see the MilkyWay-sponsored web site at http://www.milkyway.co.za/tswaing

The group of 20 children met at the MilkyWay early on Sunday morning, the 6th December. An hour and a half later, they arrived at Tswaing, and after a briefing on the history of the area, embarked on a 5km walk through the nature reserve on a beautiful highveld December morning. The group was organised into small groups of 4, each with a monitor, under the supervision of MlkyWay employees Stacey Coconas and Vuyokazi Mabece.

 

The group at the Crater: from the top right Vuyo, Stacey and
PCB Support Co-ordinator Vanessa Davies and her husband Peter.

 

After the walk, the group returned to the Museum facilities for a braai under the shade of Arcacia trees, returning to the city late in the afternoon after a long and fun-filled day.

All the PCB and MilkyWay staff involved felt that it was an extremely satisfying adventure, and hope to be able to facilitate many such adventures in the future for the inner city youth.

PCB Directors Paul Boulle and Bruce Gillespie felt it was money & time well spent, and urge other companies to think about doing the same sort of thing. "Besides being an exciting and educational adventure for these children, it creates an enormous amount of goodwill in the community" commented Bruce, who also convened the outing.

 

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