COMPUTER LITERACY TRAINING
IkamvaYouth’s Grade 10 learners with no previous experience of computers were introduced to the world of IT through Operation Fikelela, our context-specific introductory computer literacy training curriculum. The group will continue the lessons through the rest of the year.
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.
Tutoring
by Phillip Mcelu
This was the best holiday programme IkamvaYouth has ever had from how everything was organized to how the tutors managed their time. With the holiday programme we are able to perform the IkamvaYouth principles the learners ratio to tutors, because these kids in their schools the is one teacher with 40 to 50 learners in the class and due to that many learners get left behind; the thing that I found within many subject each chapter is a link to the next one therefore if they don’t get to understand the basics they are lost throughout the curriculum. We as the tutors of IkamvaYouth we try by all means to close that gap.
The first thing that we do is shrink the ratio into 5-6 learners per tutor. This allows the learner to be free to ask question to the tutors. In the holiday programme we had good number of tutors that were keen and hard working. What I found and works really well for IkamvaYouth tutors is that tutors get to tutor what they are knowledgeable in and that make it easier for a tutor to come up with better analogies and examples to explain complex problems.
During the holiday programme we were able to cover most of the subjects (Maths, Physical Science, Life Science, Geography, English, Accounting, Economics, business Studies and history) with grades 10 through 12; with grade 9, we came up with the idea to cover Maths, English, and Computer. We chose these subjects because they are the core foundation of the entire curriculum they do in school. English is the sole language that these learner get tested on, and we saw that most of the learners who do not understand their work is due to the fact they do not understand English entirely. Mathematics is one of the subjects that are compulsory for them to do until grade 12.
With the other grades (10 -12), we use the national curriculum from the South African Department of Education. We downloaded previous papers, worksheets, and exams for them to work through with the tutors. On the holiday programme, exceptional rooms were provided to tutors by TSiBA education who also allowed us to do some teaching on subjects where we saw the need (i.e. re-teaching a chapter that you see that the whole class does not understand).
Lloyd Lungu031 909 3590
lloyd@ikamvayouth.org
2525 Ngcede Grove, Umlazi AA Library, 4031
Lloyd is a self-disciplined and highly goal-driven Industrial Psychology Honours graduate. He is currently a Master's candidate completing his second year of M.Com in Industrial Psychology at the University of the Free State. Lloyd joined IkamvaYouth as a learner in 2012, after matriculating he came back and volunteered as a tutor for the duration of his undergraduate studies at UKZN. He later worked as an Intern in the Chesterville branch. His passion for youth empowerment and inclusion has grown enormously through his time and experience gained within IkamvaYouth and has inspired him to provide career guidance to young township people. He is currently working at the Umlazi Branch as a Branch Assistant.