Following recent incidences of gang-related violence around the Nyanga community, Nyanganites reached out to partner organisation Safety Lab, for a safe-talk workshop at Zolani Centre.
The Lab’s representatives had a full afternoon talking to the 35 Nyanganites in Grades 9 and 10. Neo from The Lab spoke to the learners about his experiences growing up in the same circumstances as the learners, and how he sought to keep himself safe during his school years. The learners were full of questions and asked the Safety Lab team how they can handle intimidation by bullies and gang members at school and in the community. Neo and Lindile were up to the tasks and shared personal stories together with their expert knowledge as safety ambassadors in the community.
Sinobom Ngubombi in Grade 10 said the following: ‘the workshop was excellent. I enjoyed it. Bhut’ Neo told us about his life and I am inspired by his story. ‘
Thank you Safety Lab for your work with IY Nyanga!
During the third term, Nyanga branch got ex-ikamvanite Unathi Basoni to conduct a job-readiness and CV workshop with the Grade 10s and 11s.
In the workshop, Unathi took the group of 45 through a step-by step process of find job advertisements, verifying legitimacy and then applying. The learners learnt how to write a CV and cover letter and how to present themselves in an interview.
‘It is always good to impart the knowledge that you have to young people’, says Unathi, and he has availed himself to the learners, for more workshops in the future. Thank you Unathi. IY Nyanga appreciates you!
Saturday the 21st of September 2013 was a very exciting day for the Ikamvanites. Despite waking up to very cold weather, Ikamvanites from both the Ebony Park and Ivory Park branches came together at the Ebony Park branch to receive special gifts from the Tzu Chi Foundation.
Dean Teng, a Tzu Chi Foundation representative said that the young Ikamvanites have always helped and supported The Tzu Chi Foundation when they were conducting their Winter Relief Community Outreach Programmes over previous months. Dean said it was now the Ikamvanites’ turn to receive from Tzu Chi. A truck full of bags of 5kg rice as well as stationery packs parked on the IkamvaYouth premises and each Ikamvanite was handed the gifts from Tzu Chi. The learners were so thankful and appreciated having such support from people coming from very far away. The young ladies, especially, had to grow some muscles to carry everything they had been given back to their homes because it was really heavy.
The Tzu Chi Foundation has been working together with IkamvaYouth for 3 years. They bring fruits to the learners every Saturday morning and have also given some of our Grade 12s bursaries to continue with their tertiary education.
Thank you Tzu Chi for your continued support to all the Ikamvanites!!!
We are entering an exciting stage of our development as we enter the 10th year of delivering tutoring and mentoring services to South Africa’s youth. We developed Vision 2030 at the end of 2012, which is to see the one million learners who start Grade 1 in 2018 matriculating and accessing employment by 2030. For this to happen we need to work together.
We issued a call for potential community partners in July 2013. Applications came from all over South Africa and we have had the pleasure of meeting a number of these organisations and individuals. The selflessness that we have seen, the extra jobs people are taking just to pay tutors transport costs, to buy learning resources and to build extra tutoring rooms, has truly inspired us. The realisation that there are so many people who are unshakably committed to a better future for South Africa’s youth has led us to widen and deepen our call for partners. We want to involve as many people as we can in the collaboration project so that these superheroes are recognised for, and supported in the work that they do.
At the beginning of this year IkamvaYouth was proud to have supported over 3,000 students through grades 8-12. The majority of whom have gone on to study at universities and colleges, and secure themselves competitive job placements. This group of inspirational students, along with the volunteers and staff that have tutored and mentored them, are part of the ever-growing Ikamvanite family.
The IkamvaYouth model offers a solution to the education challenges facing South Africa. Bill Clinton once said “Nearly every problem has been solved by someone, somewhere. The challenge of the 21st century is to find out what works and scale it up.” We have a solution and through collaboration and collective learning we hope to scale this solution by enabling other actors to replicate these results.
We have spent 10 years making mistakes, learning from them and developing a high-impact tutoring and mentoring model based on these lessons. What has been produced is a model that can be easily replicated while allowing for adjustment to specific contexts. The key principles and success is based on starting early, maintaining commitment, tutoring not teaching, and assisting with post-school placements.
This sounds too simple to be true, but IkamvaYouth has proven that a solution to the education crisis does not have to be a complicated and costly project but can be a simple beneficiary-led programme driven by a passionate community. There are hundreds of organisations across the country working for the same ends, so why not work together?
We are now calling to everyone to scour the Western Cape for those movers and shakers, those individuals and organisations that inspire you, those who are going above and beyond to deliver education programmes for South Africa’s youth. We want to meet them, share with them, enable them and support them in the implementation of tutoring programmes that by 2030 will have supported every learner to reach Grade 12.
It is time for this family to get bigger! There are various levels of involvement from online access to resources to formal partnership.
Please contact zoe@ikamvayouth.org or call 0744767965 for more details about working together.
Lloyd Lungu