IKAMVAYOUTH GAUTENG
WINTER SCHOOL HOLIDAY PROGRAMME REPORT
14-25 JUNE 2010
IkamvaYouth Gauteng once again hosted a very successful winter school holiday programme thanks to the generosity of our supporters and the tireless efforts of an awesome group of volunteers and a highly dedicated group of IkamvaYouth learners.
SUPPLMENTARY TUTORING
The key component of IkamvaYouth’s winter school is the academic support and learners had three sessions of tutoring every day lasting between an hour and an hour-and-a-half per session. A variety of tutoring resources were used including work the learners brought with them, past papers, mock exams and study guides. Regular ‘English Fundamentals’ sessions were held with additional sessions focused on exam preparation. Maths remains the subject for which learners request the most assistance.
WORKSHOPS
Gareth Coatz from the South African Aids Trust ran a workshop with the learners on harassment. He got Ikamvanites buzzing with opinions and energy on the matter, especially on the different experiences of girls and boys. Some useful conclusions were drawn about some strategies for dealing with harassment not least of which a commitment from the learners to speak honesty and respectfully to each other on issues of gender and the different experiences. In addition to these workshops, a number of sessions were helpd on the topics of leadership as followership. ’Who is the thief?’ Respect, and Resolve hosted a Conflict Management session.
HIV/AIDS
By Luyanda Kota
Before the winter school, we kind of adopted a slogan that says “if you don’t know your status, then you don’t know your future”. This is indeed correct in every sense of the work and we are happy that we addressed the need for more HIV/AIDS awareness stuff at the Winter School by inviting and number of organisations to help our learners out.
YouthAids was the first organisation to come and they had a great approach of creating awareness in a fun way with music and learners dancing. They gave a lot of gifts to our learners as they were asking them about a number of pertinent issues to create that Peer to Peer learning. We also had the favourates Partners in Sexual Health (PSH) and once again learners liked the workshop as it was more of a debating approach. Last but by no means last OIL came to and approached the awareness in a form of activities and games.
At the end of the Winter School New Start came to Nazeema Isaacs Library but due to the bad weather they tested few of our learners. We are hoping that we will continue to fly the flag of creating awareness and once again we want to say “if you don’t know your status, then you don’t know your future”
Kirstenbosch Excursion
by Nkosinathi Baartman
IKAMVA YOUTH managed to send 72 learners and five tutors to attend a workshop at Kisternbosch. Ikamvanites arrived at 10am at Kisternbosch and were welcomed by teachers who were going to help them for the day. Grade 10s did biomes programme and Grade 11s did programme comparing mosses, ferns, gymnosperms and angiosperms while Grade 9s did programmes on wetlands and focusing on evolution.
Learners were very impressed about this opportunity and now they have a lot of information such as different types of plants and trees. The interesting part about that session was to know what is needed for having all the things around us as the human beings. Also the learners were showing an interest because they were challenged by teachers asking them questions about what they have taught them.
Learners showed respect and behaved very well and as a result Kirstenbosch has opened an invitation for IkamvaYouth to visit them next year. Tutor Ikamvanites were very involved while engaging with Kirstenbosch teachers and they also had fun while they can’t forget the beautiful Kisternbosh.
Iziko Annexe Trip
By Christopher Fan
The learners from IkamvaYouth Makhaza had the opportunity to attend a Drawing Workshop at the Iziko Annexe. Students had the opportunity to view and appreciate works of art created by fellow peers and learners their own age from different schools around the Western Cape. At the Annexe, basic drawing workshops are provided to all learners ever last Monday of the month. Our learners from Makhaza learned how to create works of art with basic materials. Using cardboard, paper, paint, and cardboard tubing, our learners were taught and assisted on making African trees such as the gum tree, baobab tree, and Italian Iron Pine, and many more. Tutors, Annexe Workers, and the learners had a wonderful time working together and using creativity to produce their own works of art.
CG – Career Guidance
By Luyanda Kota
Winter Schools seems to be dominated by Career Guidance after tutoring to some extent that tutoring on its own is a form of career guidance because working towards any career requires consciousness about marks and entrance requirements. We kicked started this with Allan Gray giving a workshop about the scholarships that they offer. This was very important as we hoping that at least one Ikamvanite would obtain this scholarship.
This offered Entrepreneurship workshop to our grade 12s and we are hoping that some of our learners will be entrepreneurs one day and grow the economy while giving much needed job opportunities to the wider youth that is predominantly unemployed.
We also had study methods by Ginia and we know how important it is for our learners to add on their tips of studying. Last but not least we had Mentors meeting their mentees. We envisaged that mentors will be speaking to the mentees about their careers and where they are interns of making plans for the year after matric. We also hoped that they Mentors will have some material about bursaries but that was not possible and we will need to make sure that they get this info soon.
Computer Literacy
by Sinethemba Luthango
The holiday programme was a great experience, and I enjoyed from the beginning to the end. As a Computer Literacy teacher, I enjoyed my classes. The work that I have done with my learners was very effective because most of the learners enjoyed my classes as well as learned and benefited from them. The only thing that was a dilemma was time because we did not have enough time to cover everything I wish we could. We did, however, cover much the basics. Provided more time in the future, I believe we will do much better and succeed even more with our learners in the area of Computer Literacy.
The computer classes should be offered to all our learners because Computer Literacy is vital and necessary for all of them. Giving them the opportunity to learn computer skills is a great step to open doors for them in real life because they need these experiences in order to be successful socially, personally, academically, and professionally in life. For me, I enjoy my work as a Computer Literacy teacher, and I believe that I am making a difference to our learners’ lives. I will still continue doing what I love, and that is being a Computer Literacy teacher.
Lloyd Lungu