About us
Brak en Jan is a non-profit organisation which provides care and education to children from the ages of two to six years. We are a registered entity which receives funding from the Department of Social Development for its Early Childhood Development programme.
Brak en Jan was founded many years ago to provide an early childhood education for children from the local farms. We continue to do this but also reach out to children further afield who cannot afford this locally.
Our Mini-Bus donated by Mercedes makes three school runs in the morning and afternoon to the local farms, Firgrove and Macassar where many of the farm workers live.
Brak en Jan’s Board, Principal and Staff strive to offer the very best Early Childhood Education to see our children reach their full potential with the support of the Learning Initiative, Hemel-op-Aarde, Forward Foundation, Masikhule and our sponsors and friends.
"Bernd Holtkamp had a dream: Kindergartens based on a sustainable, energy-saving and environmentally-friendly model."
Looking for a suitable location, he met a small Methodist community in Raithby. In this spread-out area, farm workers and their families still live in small, widely scattered communities. Urban sprawl makes it almost impossible to provide children with regular care and education. For this reason, a central place for child care needed to be found. And it was found: the property next to the Primary School in Raithby. After a long period of negotiations, it was provided by the parish in 2008.
In co-operation with the Technical University of Munich (Technische Universitat München), we developed the idea to create a model of how it should be constructed. This was as a “model project” with the Departments of Civil Engineering and Architecture. For their degree thesis, 30 students on these two degree courses, considered the ideal construction of a kindergarten. The best, award-winning thesis of these 30 students, was used as the kindergarten’s construction model. This finally resulted in a six-week practical implementation by the students and staff in Raithby on-site.
The project was financed by private resources, sponsors, the Technical University of Munich and its students (total costs approx. ZAR 1.8 million, about 107.000 Euros). The result is impressive: a marvelous kindergarten with under-floor heating (solar heating system) in all classrooms.
