There was reason to celebrate once more this week as resident accounting genuis and Ikamvanite Shelton Chadya achieved 1st Place in the Regional Competition of the SAIPA National Accounting Olympiad.
Shelton has been one of Ivory Park IkamvaYouth’s most committed learners and is also the Grade 12 representative on the local Branch Committee. This award is truly an exceptional achievement and few people deserve this more than Shelton whose hard work, perseverence and commitment is paying off handsomely. Of course, this week Shelton’s focus is on Maths and English as the matric exams start in earnest and he is confident his exams will go well.
Next Year Shelton plans to be studying (as you would expect) BCOM Accounting and has been accepted at both UJ and WITS. As things stand he is looking for ways to finance his degree. If, perchance, you are reading this and you know someone looking for a worthy candidiate for a scholarship, you really should look no further. We could not possibly recommend Shelton more highly so please get in touch. This is one investment that we can guarantee signfiicant returns on. Email: andrew@ikamvayouth.org for more info.
Over the next few weeks 20 students from Makhaza will be embarking on a pilot programme by the Khan academy. This academy is on a mission to provide free world-class education to anyone anywhere.
The Khan Academy, an educational NGO created in 2006 by Bangladeshi-American educator Salman Khan, uses over 2600 videos covering anything from basic mathematics, history, finance, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, economics and computer science.
Championed and managed by Andrew Einhorn, a Potter scholar at UCT the Makhaza lab has had a complete overall, kindly co-funded by the Potter Foundation, the US Embassy and WIT.
Students can make use of the extensive video library, practice exercises, and assessments from any computer with access to the web. They can start at 1+1 and work their way into calculus or jump right into whatever topic needs some brushing up. Each problem can be broken down step-by-step through watching a related video
At Makhaza we are piloting this innovative system with the grade 9’s and 10’s involving the math part of the system. We are doing this because of the low basic numeracy skills of township learners. Our learners will cover the basics and ensure that they have the grounding they need to tackle grade-level mathematics.
Huge thanks for Andrew Einhorn, the Potter Foundation, US Embassy, and WIT for making this happen!!
Here are a few pictures of the lab upgrade in action..
People speak of our IkamvaYouth in Makhaza as being a beacon of hope and light in the community, a safe place for learners to come and learn, a place where people become agents of change in their own lives, a place where learners can be safe from the other factors in their lives. Here gang culture is dissipated, close friendships are formed; people feel like they belong.
So when the news that Mphumzi Klaas was murdered came though one Sunday morning in June it shattered all of us and everything we believed about in Ikamva was shaken to the very core. Our best friend, confidante, our rock in unsteady times was lost to us forever.
And yet, life needed to go on, winter school started the very next day, and so with 150 people balancing grieving and all the high energy that comes with winter school we decided a fitting memorial needed to made, in a place where Ikamva can show the community we may be down but not out. We would all rise out of this and remember Mphumzi though the way he lived his life, his values and love for people, making sure that he lives on through all of us. He embodied a true ikamvanite lived his life with the values of Ikamva at his core.
Today he was memorialised on our wall of our office not only for everyone at Ikamva to see but everyone in the community to know IkamvaYouth is bigger than any one person, bigger than anything we could ever imagine, that no mater what happens we go on and only get stronger.
Big up to Ricky, Veronica and Vumanizumu!! We LOVE it! Your incredible talent in portraying Mphumzi brings back memories we thought were lost to us forever..
In an attempt to raise awareness of the environment and the fundamental reasons why we need to respect our surroundings we took a small group of grade 9 and 10 to the Kalk Bay beach clean up on 17th September to celebrate International Coastal Clean Up Day.
Long time tutor Tracey Drew came to help with her ERMteam and provided all the bags, gloves and snacks.
There was a real sense of purpose and when talking to learners about why it was important to pick up litter, there seemed to be a great awareness of the reasons why they should do it. When pushed on why they thought people didn’t do and why, particularly in township areas there is a lot of litter pollution they were far hazier.
Some said that people just didn’t care about anything beyond themselves. While others promoted the fact that people cared about others, the environment and animals but could not see the benefit of engaging in conservation activities. The main reason being that it does not have an immediate impact on their lives; stealing from the future to satisfy the present.
Is it a luxury to be able to care about conservation and environmental sustainability? The answers to this were manifold and would need a whole other blogpost.
As a learner stumbled across a shopping trolley filled with smashed glass bottles hidden at the back of the beach, the discussion turned to solutions. Again a multitude of suggestions were put forward and many faces were scrunched in thought – or maybe it was just the sun in their eyes!
The suggestion from most was that the motivation to pick up litter (or not to drop it in the first place) would only come if people saw the negative impact of it upon their own lives. It is great to come to a beach and learn about the importance of environment and not littering but when they return to their homes they enter into a community where it is not seen as taboo to through a plastic bottle into the river or the street. So, in order to change peoples’ habits of littering and polluting their environment they must be taught about the negative effects in their environment. To get people to start cleaning up the townships you have to start cleaning up the townships; make it visible and educate along the way.
Obviously the day made the learners and myself think a lot and hopefully ERM will assist in organising many more activities of this sort.
‘We’re really going places’ Drama Club
The drama club started in Masiphumelele several months ago and with their performance of a scene from Broken Promises, an exciting new book launched by non-profit Cover2Cover, they have found local fame.
They have already performed at the Masiphumelele Library, Franschoek Literacy Festival, Matthew Goniwe High School, and Open Book Festival Cape Town. Phumza Kibi is a member of the group and was asked to be the cover girl for their latest book ‘Sugar Daddy’. The posters are up in the library, at school and obviously in Phumza’s house!
Cover2cover provided each member with their own copy and profuse thanks for their involvement.
Cover2cover is a fresh new publisher dedicated to filling a need in the South African book market: popular fiction relevant to the lives of the millions of township teenagers. It is making a huge difference toward creating a culture of reading in South Africa, particularly amongst township youth. The eagerness that Ikamvanites have approached these books has been fantastic. Reading and re-reading copies that are already well-worn.
Cover2 Cover made an initial donation of 10 books to Masiphumelele Library and have been kind enough to offer a donation to other IkamvaYouth branches.
The popularity of the books and their demand has demonstrated that there is a need for relevant literature aimed at this target audience. However, these books shouldn’t just be distributed in townships as the issues raised are relevant to all teens. In a way this exciting social entrepreneurship organization could have a profound impact on the way youth in South Africa read as well as building understanding and relationships between each other. It is wonderful to be a part of such an exciting venture.
The drama club are busy scripting the whole of Jealous in Jozi so that they can put together a full drama performance – watch this space!
By Liesel Bakker
It’s been hard to ignore these past few weeks the coverage at Chris Hani High School in Makhaza involving a brutal attack leaving Malibongwe Melani, a grade 12 student, severely injured in hospital. (See articles in the
Voice of the Cape and
Cape Argus) Students are feeling very embittered with school life, the dysfunctional state of the school and the powerlessness of feeling unsafe in the very place they’re supposed to be learning and developing. A small group of students vented these frustrations in a very destructive way, making fires, throwing desks, rocks, sticks and other objects off the 2nd floor school building, at the principal, police and whoever was unfortunate enough to be in their path, shutting the school and disrupting scheduled exams.
However our amazing Ikamvanites are not letting this huge disruption to their exam period and school life get in their way of being the agents of change in their lives and of their friends. The Grade 11’s from Chris Hani came to us asking for extra physics classes to catch up not only the 12 weeks of work they missed by not having a teacher as well as the 2 weeks of disruption to their regular school day. So today, while the sun is blazing and their friends are all playing soccer in the road, they are instead sitting in our office learning about lenses and light with practical examples taught by our newest volunteering ikamvanite, retired UCT lecturer
Prof John Greene.
These learners are really inspirational not only to other Ikamvanites but to their friends as well as the small group of destructive students. These are truly learners making the impossible happen for themselves, showing the others how no one can stand in the way of being the change in their lives.
Well done Ikamvanites, and Big Up to Prof John Greene!!
Lloyd Lungu