The Makhaza Branch on IkamvaYouth has started the year sprinting! This year we have grown staggeringly to over 200 people with 170 learners and over 30 tutors, extending tutoring times to every day of the week including weekends!
Already the new year has begun with some exciting projects, Khan Academy is in full swing with two Grade 9 groups participating, as well as the programme being extended to grades 10 and 11. Education Without Borders ‘Yes We Can’ maths project has also begun with the new group of grade 8s. We expect the same incredible successes as last year. English programmes have also been implemented at the younger grade levels, as well as regular tutoring and mentoring for the older grades.
Matrics have begun their year with sessions identifying where they would like to be shadowing tutors in their classes later in the year as well as which institutions they’d like to come chat with them about their options. Last year’s matrics are also in the process of being places in various institutions and making sure no one is left behind this year.
Last Saturday we had our first parents meeting of 2012 with an amazing turnout, the hall was packed to capacity where there was a distinct feeling of excitement and hope for the year to come. Of all the students who made it in 4 were turned away, and waiting lists are at an all time high.
Meeting the parents
We also have two new interns helping us out with tutoring, admin work and setting up databases for the new students. Claire Fisher and Tumisang Madigele are both currently attending the Stanford University study abroad program in Cape Town for their winter term and volunteering at IkamvaYouth.
“Hi! My name is Claire Fisher, and I am from San Francisco, California in the United States. I am a third year student at Stanford University studying political science with concentrations in political theory and American politics.
I am also very passionate about education reform, but my academic and experiential background pertains mostly to education in the United States. I am taking a class here on schooling and education policy in South Africa, so hopefully that will give me a better understanding of the context. I am excited to work at IkamvaYouth to learn more about education in a hands-on way, and I love tutoring, especially in algebra, English, and history! I am already impressed by IkamvaYouth’s incredible reputation, success rates, and mobilization of its students to return to the organization. I also am a huge fan of Khan Academy and am inspired by its ability to use technology to broaden access to quality lesson plans, and so the fact that Ikamvanites use it is amazing.
I wanted to come to Cape Town because of its urban cityscape and beautiful mountains, and I find the cultural complexity of the city due to its historical legacy both challenging and fascinating.
Thanks for having me, IkamvaYouth!”
And Tumisang says, “Hi, my name is Tumisang Madigele and I am from Botswana. I am doing my third year in International Relations at Stanford University. I am interested in working within African communities, especially with organizations whose goal is to empower youth. I am excited to be tutoring kids and helping out at Ikamva. It’s great to work with motivated youth!”
Tumisang and Claire
We are also calling for more tutors this year. Tutoring schedules are as follows:
Grade 8&9 – Monday and Wednesday 3:30pm-5:30pm, and Saturday 9-1pm
Grade 10-12 – Tuesday and Thursday 3:30pm-5:30pm, and Saturday 9-1pm
If you are interested please email Liesel:
liesel@ikamvayouth.org
079 885 4372
Good luck all our Makhaza Ikamvanites!
Take yourself back to high school, back to a time when you did the barest minimum to get through school, a time when you’d rather be outside running around than buried in your school book after school. Some of the grade 11 learners are bucking this trend, and not only are they committed learners at IkamvaYouth (all with 100% attendance) but they also participate in IkamaYouth’s first official Book Club.
While the Book Club is still in it’s infancy they have already all read ‘One Day’ by David Nicholls. They have also tackled all the books in the ‘Twilight’ series, a popular teenage series. As a reward they were all treated to the opening of the ‘Breaking Dawn’ movie (one of the novels in the series).
Lungile Madela had this to say, “Twilight to me is an amazing story, set apart from the world, filled with wonderful characters and a fantastic plot. I’ve had the pleasure of reading all the books thanks to IkamvaYouth, it was an amazing experience for me. The books are very compelling and incredibly hard to put down, once you’ve started you cannot stop. The idea of bringing the books to life on our screens was a magnificent one.
The movies are as great as the books, the characters are exceptionally cast and so alike to the ones’ on the books it’s surreal to picture them elsewhere. In the fourth book of the series, Stephenie Meyer has truly outdone herself. She’s created a riveting climax to the story and has us at the edge of our seats. Breaking Dawn Part 1 was a delight for Twilight fans everywhere.
I can’t wait for part 2!!!! Fingers’ crossed for part 3..
If you have any books you’d like to donate or have any contacts to run literary workshops with our learners please contact:
Liesel Bakker – Makhaza Branch Coordinator
Tel: 079 633 8155
Email: liesel@ikamvayouth.org
Khan academy is an online learning tool created by Salman Khan in the United States (www.khanacademy.org). While it provides educational content for a variety of subjects, its primary focus is mathematics. Put simply, when a learner “does” Khan Academy, they work their way through a series of exercise modules, beginning with the simplest problems in math, like 2 + 5, and progressing until the learners are working on algebra, trigonometry, and even calculus problems. The idea behind Khan Academy is that when a learner reaches a module covering material they find difficult or have not encountered before, they can watch a video that teaches them how to do it. In this way, they can effectively self-learn their way through the entire school curriculum.
A couple of months ago, I approached Liesel Bakker – the branch coordinator at Ikamva Youth, Makhaza – to see whether we might pilot Khan Academy with some of their learners. Ikamva Youth, as I rapidly discovered, is a “can-do” kind of place. Within weeks we had a computer lab installed, and today we are five weeks into the pilot.
In keeping with Khan Academy tradition, I have put together a short youtube video to keep our sponsors (and you!) up-to-date with what we are doing:
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A special thanks to Liesel, Zukile, Thembi and Joy for providing the learners, the space, and the necessary support to make this happen; to David and Elaine Potter for your generous sponsorship and encouragement; to the US Embassy for contributing towards the lab upgrade; and last but not least, to the coaches – Unathi, Yanga, Mandise, and Bekho – for your continued commitment to, and enthusiasm for, the project.
And lest I leave out our most important participants, congratulations to our pioneering grade nines who have steadfastly stuck with the program and blown us away with their mathematical ability.
One pencil, one pad of paper, go! Khan Academy in action
Of Mice and Monitors – Installing the new lab
Our Masiphumelele students have been invited to participate to the eMzantsi Carnival. The theme, this year, is focused on sustainable development. All of the costumes have been made from recycled materials. Youth will parade with 800 other young people from all over the South Peninsula Communities. It will be a time to celebrate our cultural diversities.
Save the 3rd of December to watch and encourage the Youth at the Parade on the Kommetjie Road. All information for time, location on their website: http://www.emzantsi.org.za/
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.
Lloyd Lungu