IkamvaYouth has tried, tested and developed an effective model for addressing South Africa’s education crisis, and ‘it is working!’ We are now in five provinces, and receive countless requests from communities across the country to replicate the model. We are now gearing up to respond to these calls, and to do this we need your help.
Reflecting on the great impact IkamvaYouth has had on the lives of South African township youths over the past nine years is a hopeful and inspiring exercise. More and more learners are accessing free tutoring and homework assistance services, and reaping the rewards. Over 77% of Ikamvanites have, since 2005, accessed the post-school opportunities they need to pull themselves and their families out of poverty. And three out of five matriculating learners return to the organisation as volunteer tutors.
IkamvaYouth is on a path to ensure all children in South Africa who enrol in school successfully complete grade 12 or its equivalent, access post-school opportunities, and have a dignified living four years after matriculating. We acknowledge the great role of our partners and funders in making this possible, having learnt the crucial role of parents, communities, companies, other non-profits, government departments, schools and tertiary institutions.
IkamvaYouth’s greatest benefactors are the volunteer tutors and mentors, who in 2013 will provide over 8 million rands’ worth of after-school support. We’re now calling for financial donations from individuals to help us dramatically boost our impact. By investing in today’s learners, you’re also investing in the tutors for the following years’ learners.
IkamvaYouth is participating in the Global Giving Winter Open Challenge 2012, an opportunity that could land us a permanent spot on the Global Giving Website (www.globalgiving.org), an online giving platform for NGOs that will enable us to access donations from all over the world.
The challenge is to raise at least $5000 (about ZAR45, 000), from at least 40 different donors; between 26thNovember and 31st December 2012.
Give a life-changing gift this festive season, and empower the township youths of South Africa through education, replicating the IkamvaYouth model across the country. We can achieve a lot with any amount you can give. You can also make a big difference by sharing the challenge with others.
Click here to donate via creditcard, PayPal or gift card.
To find out more about IkamvaYouth, see www.ikamvayouth.org.
Two Gauteng Ikamvanites (Nyasha Mutasa & Modjadji-M Selowe) attended the Nalibali Reading for enjoyment initiative (www.nalibali.org) in partnership with University of Johannesburg(UJ) and Avusa Media (www.Avusa.co.za)
This initiative aims to get South African people (children and adults) passionate about telling and reading stories. Nalibali uses the power of stories, both oral and written in different languages, to inspire children to desire to read and write. Through reading, telling stories and writing, both adults and children get to know one another in relaxed and nurturing ways.
Books and stories deepen our thinking by stretching our imaginations and encouraging creative problem solving. IkamvaYouth Gauteng is passionate about literacy development hence we support and encourage learners to read through the Nalibali initiatives.
Let’s read , write, tell our stories and build a literate community
30 ikamvanites from Gauteng attended the HIP2B2 3M Innovation challenge final held on the 18 of October 2012. It was addressed by the Honourable Minister of Science and Technology Mr Dave Hannekom and other relevant stakeholders including SAAST,SAWS and SABC’s top current affairs journalists.
The Innovation challenge is about exposing learners to having a scientific approach to things and life in general (identifying a problem, identify scientific methods and resources to addressing the problem and finally getting learners to create and design models).
Unfortunately, none of our learners made it to the finals, but we take pride in our fellow school Maphutha Secondary School, who represented Johannesburg East District 9 as well as the entire Gauteng Province and had the opportunity to participate in the competition.
Let us continue encouraging our learners to enter such competitions so that they improve their experimental learning and academic exploring!!
Each Ikamvanite shared their unique understanding of the vision and then collaboratively mapped the way forward, brainstorming the ways in which the different branches will implement it.
After re-visiting the vision, the group launched a discussion on the targets for 2013 and the IY budget, at both branch and provincial level. The targets set for our current Matrics lie between an 80% and 100% pass rate for all our branches across the country and our average spend per leaner continues to show that we can make a difference in the lives of the young people we work with, at very low cost. As testimony to this, 12 of our Matrics from the Makhaza branch have been pre-accepted into different courses at the University of Cape Town and this can be linked directly to the influence of the IY program and model.
The relatively low spend per learner partly motivates our vision to expand and replicate the existing IkamvaYouth model. Not only is our model tried and tested for 9 years, but it is cost effective and therefore accessible for everyone who wants to take part in building an even better South Africa.
Our day ended with the IkamvaYouth staff exchanging gifts. It was a fun but meaningful time, where we realised once again that IkamvaYouth is not just an NGO, but a family that really cares.
It is our second Monday at the Hearth and Soul Farm here in Stanford, Capetown, and the NSPW continues. Ikamvanites are over the hill with joy and the IY partners are amazed and curious to know more. We have representatives from Capitec, Tsiba, Sozo Foundation, Learning Trust, IkamvaYouth board and other supporting individuals. The day started with a super fantastic exercise from Ilana, and then Mignon got us engaged with the understanding of the IkamvaYouth Vision and model. We had a team task that left everyone very excited. Ikamvanites and partners were divided into five groups of eight each, and were provided with materials to build a stage were all members of the group could stand and make a presentation. Having learnt the role of teamwork, and the great value of bringing together resources and ‘expertise’, all participants worked together to build one stage, and were not keen to work separately. The stage was finished in time, and all of the over 40 participants were on stage, singing melodiously mentioning all they had learnt in the week. The lessons learnt from the task, is how to work as a team and how each of our contributions are vital to reaching our goal. After that we had a wonderful lunch from our great chef and then hard-core stuff started with the strategy ideas being brought up in the room. We were aiming for the sky, and none of us felt like they were being left behind to this amazing journey that is about to start. The results of this strategy session left everyone eager to start working the following day and committed to reaching the 2030 goal.
Great Ideas are born from nothing.
NSPW has been a whirlwind experience for this new Ikamvanite. Ten days ago I was in a job interview, and today I’m a part of the team that is shooting for a 100% pass rate for 100% of South Africa’s 2030 matric cohort. But that’s not the crazy part.
The crazy part is that I believe we can do it.
To get there, we’ll have to make some fundamental shifts in the way we understand
Ikamva. Over the next 17 years, we need to go from organisation to organism.
We need to infect South Africa with our belief, our energy, and our hope. After all,
whether you think you can, or whether you think you can’t – you’re right.
But to get to 2030 we first need to get through 2013. We spent the afternoon of
NSPW day 6 laying out Ikamva’s strategic priorities for 2013, figuring out how to
grow faster, do better, and learn more. Underlying all the key priorities we identified
were common themes of building stronger relationships, communicating better, and
sharing ownership of our success.
But even amidst all the excitement, we didn’t lose sight of the fact that we have
branches to run and admin to do. We need to keep proving that what we are already
doing really, really works. That means maintaining and improving our results at every
branch, every year, starting with 2013.
And 2030? Watch this space.
Lloyd Lungu