At IkamvaYouth we wish to empower students to be successful students as well as citizens. To do this, we wish to make our students aware of social pariahs that can be just as important to them as an upcoming exam. With this in mind, IkamvaYouth at Makhaza has embarked on introducing Siyayinqoba!, a programme promoting youth awareness of social issues such as HIV/AIDS, Teen Pregnancy, Hate Crimes, and much more. “Get Informed! Get Involved” is their slogan, and so IkamvaYouth Makhaza has chosen to get their learners informed and involved.
From 22 July 2010 to 29 July 2010, IkamvaYouth Makhaza’s 11th graders were introduced to a lesson on Teenage Pregnancy. They began with a fun icebreaker that made words that are uncomfortable to say easier to talk about. Afterwards, the 11th graders tackled the reasons why teenage pregnancy happen and what consequences might occur as a result. The topic ranged from STDs and HIV/AIDS to dropping out of school, being kicked out of your home, and also to never being able to obtain a proper education for social mobility.
During the second part of Teenage Pregnancy, the students began deliberating on the positives and negatives of engaging in sexual activities at a young age. They compiled a list of reasons on why to stay sexually active as well as a list of reasons to abstain. Results ranged from enjoying sex to peer pressure, disease and HIV to pregnancy, and even to opinions as wanting to be a sexually experienced partner in the future. No opinion was ridiculed nor disregarded, thanks to the open atmosphere offered by our learners.
Siyanyinqoba is here to stay, and we believe that equipping this group of learners will help them become great citizens and also give them full access to their future success.
JOIN US NEXT TIME FOR OUR 3 AUGUST WORKSHOP ON HATE CRIMES AND XENOPHOBIA!
Media, Image, and Expression
By Luyanda Kota
Once again the Media, Image and Expression programme was well represented at the last Tsiba Winter School. The line up of activities started with Chri Fan getting organised and offering Creative writing workshops, creative writing provides a platform for expression and when that foundation is there poetry and many more writing activities such as essay writing are possible.
We also had Art workhops with Donna and our learners created tangible things such as tags which if I may say were beautiful while they had strong messages on them. From there we had poetry and we are happy to present the poem at the bottom of the article as the artcle written by our learners while they were at the Winter School.
Last but by no means less we had our photography sessions were conducted by Sena Allen, Emma van der Vliet and Nicola Pallit. This provided a lot of pretty pictures that had a theme called FIFA Fever. These provided enough for the exhibition that was held at Desmond Tutu Hall in the Talent show.
Music Is…
Music is my passion
My inspiration
Makes me think of passion
Music is my everything
It reminds me of old days
It is my inner voice
Makes me feel good
Makes me feel sad
Music is my freedom
Music makes me feel welcome
Feel energetic, makes me feel warm
Music makes me feel pessimistic
Not happy at all
Music is my home
Music is my let out
Let out for sadness and stress
Let out for anger and pain
Music is my mentor
Music is my world
Written by the 11B students of IkamvaYouth Makhaza Winter Programme
Taught by Christopher Fan, IkamvaYouth Intern
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.
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).
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.
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.
Lloyd Lungu