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Acts of kindness and caring will save our metro
Church in the Community - Media Release in the Herald: 31st October 2022
Source: TCN / Pierre and Sugnét van Wyk
Date Added: 2022-10-31
Category: General News, TCN News, Issues - General, Issues - Social upliftment,
Date Added: 2022-10-31
Category: General News, TCN News, Issues - General, Issues - Social upliftment,
Good stories start by describing a certain setting. For instance: “as the sun rose over the ocean.”
Then the story takes you to a secluded beach if it is a romantic novel, or a crowded beach if it is a suspense novel. We are privileged to have both of them on our doorstep.
We are talking about the beaches. There are those further down the coast which give you a bit of seclusion and then those on our doorstep that get busier as summer temperatures rise.
Friends from inland often express their desire to give an arm and a leg just to be able to sit on one of our beaches and peer endlessly into the horizon.
But what if you stay in our city but don’t see the beaches or the ocean anymore?
Yes, it does happen! We often found ourselves driving early mornings from Kariega into the city dodging the kamikaze taxis.
In winter, when it’s still dark, we drive along stretches of road without working streetlights, and when the roads are wet the faded road markings disappear altogether.
One just prays that you will reach your destination in one piece!
After finishing your assignments for the day, and you head back home, the journey turns into another prayer meeting. This time dodging the potholes and the overloaded trucks that are so dirty that you can’t see any of the indicator signs and you have to guess if they are going left or right or are going to stop at the robot that is not working, or if they are going to go for it and let the other drivers spill their coffee in their laps.
Our beautiful beaches and blue ocean are very distant thoughts, and memory most of the time!
So, what then makes us that call this our home?
Paul Ch Donders, a well-known international life coach and author, not so long ago wrote a book that deals with the topic of resilience.
He defines the concept “as a person’s ability to deal with surprise, changes, and unexpected setbacks in a healthy manner.”
It is rather a long list if one compiles our own checklist of surprises, changes, and setbacks of recent weeks and months.
To help the reader to understand the concept better Paul defines seven resilience factors. This is not an academic lecture or paper so we will refrain from going into the detail here but linger on one of those aspects: healthy relationships.
It is a theme that appeared lately more prominently in the press and social media seeing that the 10th of October was International Mental Health Day.
One of those factors of healthy relationships is kindness. According to mental health professionals, there is a strong connection between acts of kindness and a positive mood.
Unknowingly, a person’s brain releases chemicals whenever a person is kind to another person. It gives one a “kick”. How cool is that?
Thousands of residents across our city from all walks of life make this city work on a daily basis.
Some of us grind it out. Some cruise, and some even excel in the face of all the obstacles. Like the young KwaZakhele lady who had to convince a property owner in Struandale to turn her dream of owning a restaurant into reality and whose story appeared in this newspaper recently.
And this is just one story.
On a more organized note. Various church-based and civil society initiatives at present aim to address the issues that we are all familiar with.
Underlying these efforts is a spirit of resilience embodied in exactly those healthy relationships.
One such initiative is an effort by the leadership and members of various churches across the bay.
Those of you that are regular readers of this column will be familiar with the Transformation Christian Network and the Nelson Mandela Bay Church Leadership Network as their efforts are frequently reported in this column.
The latest initiative aims to involve residents at a grassroots level to address problems in their communities through the formation of church-led “ward service delivery” teams.
In short, residents can become involved by spotting and reporting service delivery problems as and when they see them.
And to familiarize themselves with how to report service problems to the appropriate municipal call centre with a copy to the relevant ward councillor.
There is more to this initiative, but the bottom line is not to expect that someone else will report a problem and to wait for it to be fixed while sitting with our feet on the table.
So where does the act of kindness then come in?
It happens when we stop and thank workers when they do fix the pothole or repair the streetlights or the robot or whatever was vandalized or simply worn out.
And if it is a hot day, stick them to a 2L cold-drink.
We are very much entering a time in the history of our city where it is going to take the effort of every resident to keep our own ship from metaphorically stranding itself on one of our own beaches.
Everyone is welcome to join.
If you like doing your own thing but still want to make a difference, go for it!
Everyone would like to have a good story to tell one day. “The sun rose over the ocean, and everyone noticed it.”
Pierre and Sugnét van Wyk
Transformation Christian Network
Then the story takes you to a secluded beach if it is a romantic novel, or a crowded beach if it is a suspense novel. We are privileged to have both of them on our doorstep.
We are talking about the beaches. There are those further down the coast which give you a bit of seclusion and then those on our doorstep that get busier as summer temperatures rise.
Friends from inland often express their desire to give an arm and a leg just to be able to sit on one of our beaches and peer endlessly into the horizon.
But what if you stay in our city but don’t see the beaches or the ocean anymore?
Yes, it does happen! We often found ourselves driving early mornings from Kariega into the city dodging the kamikaze taxis.
In winter, when it’s still dark, we drive along stretches of road without working streetlights, and when the roads are wet the faded road markings disappear altogether.
One just prays that you will reach your destination in one piece!
After finishing your assignments for the day, and you head back home, the journey turns into another prayer meeting. This time dodging the potholes and the overloaded trucks that are so dirty that you can’t see any of the indicator signs and you have to guess if they are going left or right or are going to stop at the robot that is not working, or if they are going to go for it and let the other drivers spill their coffee in their laps.
Our beautiful beaches and blue ocean are very distant thoughts, and memory most of the time!
So, what then makes us that call this our home?
Paul Ch Donders, a well-known international life coach and author, not so long ago wrote a book that deals with the topic of resilience.
He defines the concept “as a person’s ability to deal with surprise, changes, and unexpected setbacks in a healthy manner.”
It is rather a long list if one compiles our own checklist of surprises, changes, and setbacks of recent weeks and months.
To help the reader to understand the concept better Paul defines seven resilience factors. This is not an academic lecture or paper so we will refrain from going into the detail here but linger on one of those aspects: healthy relationships.
It is a theme that appeared lately more prominently in the press and social media seeing that the 10th of October was International Mental Health Day.
One of those factors of healthy relationships is kindness. According to mental health professionals, there is a strong connection between acts of kindness and a positive mood.
Unknowingly, a person’s brain releases chemicals whenever a person is kind to another person. It gives one a “kick”. How cool is that?
Thousands of residents across our city from all walks of life make this city work on a daily basis.
Some of us grind it out. Some cruise, and some even excel in the face of all the obstacles. Like the young KwaZakhele lady who had to convince a property owner in Struandale to turn her dream of owning a restaurant into reality and whose story appeared in this newspaper recently.
And this is just one story.
On a more organized note. Various church-based and civil society initiatives at present aim to address the issues that we are all familiar with.
Underlying these efforts is a spirit of resilience embodied in exactly those healthy relationships.
One such initiative is an effort by the leadership and members of various churches across the bay.
Those of you that are regular readers of this column will be familiar with the Transformation Christian Network and the Nelson Mandela Bay Church Leadership Network as their efforts are frequently reported in this column.
The latest initiative aims to involve residents at a grassroots level to address problems in their communities through the formation of church-led “ward service delivery” teams.
In short, residents can become involved by spotting and reporting service delivery problems as and when they see them.
And to familiarize themselves with how to report service problems to the appropriate municipal call centre with a copy to the relevant ward councillor.
There is more to this initiative, but the bottom line is not to expect that someone else will report a problem and to wait for it to be fixed while sitting with our feet on the table.
So where does the act of kindness then come in?
It happens when we stop and thank workers when they do fix the pothole or repair the streetlights or the robot or whatever was vandalized or simply worn out.
And if it is a hot day, stick them to a 2L cold-drink.
We are very much entering a time in the history of our city where it is going to take the effort of every resident to keep our own ship from metaphorically stranding itself on one of our own beaches.
Everyone is welcome to join.
If you like doing your own thing but still want to make a difference, go for it!
Everyone would like to have a good story to tell one day. “The sun rose over the ocean, and everyone noticed it.”
Pierre and Sugnét van Wyk
Transformation Christian Network
Source: TCN / Pierre and Sugnét van Wyk
Date Added: 2022-10-31
Category: General News, TCN News, Issues - General, Issues - Social upliftment,
Back to News IndexDate Added: 2022-10-31
Category: General News, TCN News, Issues - General, Issues - Social upliftment,
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