MyMachine travels from Belgium to South Africa to build the machines of children’s dreams…

MyMachine has arrived in South Africa – thanks to a partnership initiated by the Community Foundation for West Flanders in Belgium and the West Coast Community Foundation who met last November at a peer learning event on community foundations and youth civic engagement, hosted by the GFCF in Cluj, Romania. 

MyMachine is the very successful youth project developed by the Community Foundation West Flanders and two other Belgian which is inspired by the imaginations of primary school children. The children are encouraged to dream up their “ideal machine” and then design students are brought in to develop first the blue-prints and then, after a selection process, the machines themselves. The South African pilot is being implemented by WCCF, working in a local partnership the Cape Peninsula University in Cape Town. A MyMachine team has come to South Africa to work both with school children at a local primary school in Malmesbury to come up with their design ideas and with university students to design and produce the actual machines. Laerskook Swartland and the Swartland Municipality, with additional funding support from the Flemish government and the GFCF. Up to date news on the project can be found on the and West Coast Community Foundation pages on Facebook, along with this film from Swartlandschool in Malmesbury.