CLN uses the medium of writing to help those impacted by conflict to share their experiences and, it is hoped, develop coping mechanisms. The organisation teaches writing skills in an effort to:

• demystify writing, communicating the message that writing is not only for elders and established writers, and that young people can write memorable work if given skills and opportunities
• fuel the community’s interest in writing and reading
• encourage South Africans to develop literary interests and needs
• enable people to research and write about life in their communities on their own terms, and in their own languages if they wish
• create a new language, not the traditional one.

In addition to gathering people together in face-to-face writing clinics, the organisation has developed Akudlalwa Communal Theatre (ACT), a developmental theatre project. Together with members of community, students, nurses, social workers, sangomas (traditional healers), and faith healers improvise and perform plays on tuberculosis, drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, tolerance, and trauma.

CLN also runs ERTON PRESS, a school newspaper project. The newspaper holds creative writing workshops to support the Afrika Reads Forum (ARF), which aims to inspire people to read, write, and buy books and to share their writing in public forums such as schools, halls, taverns and pubs. Writers from ERTON PRESS, ACT and ARF have sent their work to be published by Chakida Publishers in the collection of poetry and writing titled Walala Wasala. Click here to access a summary of this multi-lingual compilation of South African writing by prisoners and members of the ARF. The book aims to reveal an alternative potential and authorship by addressing “the human condition; love, hatred, bloodletting, hope, HIV/AIDS, life, death and education.”

Conflict, Health, Youth.

CLN suggests that its projects are helping heal the community from severe political strife that took place around the first democratic elections of South Africa in 1994. It claims to have brought about the first publication of community voices from the East Rand of Gauteng, South Africa (ERTON PRESS). Here are some additional details about this publication:

• In 1995, an ERTON PRESS journalist together with former president, Nelson Mandela, appeared in Allister Sparks’ TV documentary, which was screened for three weeks in South Africa and then overseas.
• In the same year, ERTON PRESS was awarded first prize in a school newspaper competition organised nationally by the weekly newspaper Mail & Guardian. It competed against prestigious private schools such as Durban Girls High, Athlone Boys High, and Seheti High. The school received a prize of books worth R5 000 from Penguin Publishers.
• In 1996, when the school was still using typewriters, ERTON PRESS received a donation of computers from IBM and the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism in South Africa.
• In 2001, ERTON PRESS led to the formation of BPP (Boksburg Progressive Press), an inmate newspaper at Boksburg Correctional Services. CLN indicates that inmates and students share their work and learn from each other. “Our students realized that crime does not pay. Inmates were inspired by opportunities outside.”
• In 2002, ERTON PRESS received funding for capacity building from National Development Agency. 22 young people from Katlehong, Vosloorus, and Thokoza and nearby squatter camps of the East Rand received training in computers, creative and report writing, and project and financial management, which included public relations, integration in diversity, and value-based teambuilding.