The YCAP team from Wrenchville High School was named the Provincial YCAP Champions for the second year in a row at the provincial YCAP showcase event.  The showcase event took place on 16 June 2018 in Upington where 4 High Schools and 3 Primary showcased their events.  Wrenchville High School will now represent the province at the national YCAP Championships from 27-29 July 2018.  Last year the previous team received second position in the national competition.

The YCAP team for 2018 consists out of 10 girls who are focused on breaking the stigma and silence associated with suicide.  This year’s project is named “The Dimpho Project “in memory of a Grade 9 learner who committed suicide at Wrenchville High School last year.

Some of the highlights of their project were creating a Facebook page named Dimpho project – YCAP and a Facebook group.  To this date our Facebook page has more than 1000 people who like it and our Facebook group has more than 3500 members.   They also made an anti-suicide video and this video is busy going viral by reaching more than 20 000 people.  They had an anti-suicide week at the school.  On Monday we did a speech and dance at assembly which addressed our main issues: Parents, drug and alcohol misuse, body image, bullying, peer pressure and wrong relationships.  On Tuesday we had semi-colon tattoos we done for free with all learners.  The semi-colon tattoos, the semi-colon represents a sentence the author could have ended but chose not to.  The author is you and the sentence is your life.  Don’t end your life.  On Wednesday which was human rights day.  They had a silent protest in town.  They  taped their mouths shut and walked around with messages like.  It’s not your right to take your life.  There is hope after a suicide attempt. On Thursday they had a pledge signing ceremony where learners took paint and out it on their hands then onto a banner pledging to not commit suicide.  They also released yellow balloons into the air in memory of people we lost to suicide including Dimpho. On Friday we ended to event with a Fat Cake sales to raise funds for our visitors coming from Zambia for the launch of the yellow ribbon project in South Africa.

 The Yellow Ribbon Suicide Prevention Program is a program which started in the United Sates of America.  Their website is yellowribbon.org.  To this day they have distributed more than 18 million 6 hundred and 4 cards, which include 850 cards we distributed at our school.  They More than 100 000 lives of people were saved through this project and they have 6 972 chapters and program sites throughout the world.  They are proud to say that we are the first chapter of this project in South Africa.  We are also the second chapter in the whole of Africa.  They managed to get representatives from Zambia to come to our school and launch this project at our school.  They had gatekeeper training for the teachers at our school.  This teaches them how to identify learners and help them if they are suicidal.  They could have peer to peer training with all the learners at our school teaching them how to help each other and how to help themselves. We distributed more than 850 cards, arm bands sponsored by The South African Depression and Anxiety group, flyers and information regarding suicide and yellow ribbons. Now teachers who are gatekeepers can truly help our learners.

To conclude our actions as they were a lot we had a Miss YCAP beauty pageant which attracted more than 400 young people from all over including models from Kalahari High School.  Models walked with anti-suicide boards and spread this positive message.  Going against negative body image and being beautiful in their own skin.   They also had assembly with the grade 4-7 learners at Wrenchville Primary motivating them and spreading the anti-suicide project.  We had a free hug day at the mall were we motivated all people we could find giving them hugs and motivational cards with the suicide prevention helpline number on it. 

This project has been really impactful on the learners attending school at Wrenchville High School, the teachers and people around the community.  The learners tested their impact by having pre and post questionnaires distributed at the school some of the results were.  The percentage of learners who are depressed at the school dropped from 81,8% to 29,29%.  The percentage learners who want to commit suicide dropped from 75% to 14,8%.  Therefore the team really made a difference and taught learners that their lives matters and they should not commit suicide.