The party is on! The much anticipated Winter School is nearly here. Applications are in, speakers are organised and a variety of amazing activities have been coordinated by the IkamvaYouth team and our wonderful volunteers. There are 5 winter schools taking place around South Africa – 3 in Western Cape, Gauteng, and KZN.
It all begins on the 27th June and will run until 16th July. These events bring together all the Ikamvanites; learners, volunteers, staff members, parents. 440 learners from some of South Africa’s most disadvantaged areas are spending their holidays developing their skills, identities and aspirations at the career oriented winter schools. We are lucky enough to have the support of many volunteers; tutors, speakers, and workshop facilitators, to help these events run smoothly (we hope!)
Ikamvanites get a talk at the 2010 Winter School
It is a way of introducing young learners from the townships to a wider world of opportunity through; targeted career advice and mentoring activities, supplementary tutoring, excursions and workshops, and through career speakers offering advice and support to enable the learners to access tertiary education and employment. IkamvaYouth’s volunteers are university students (many of them former IkamvaYouth learners), international volunteers, retirees, and subject specific professionals. In addition we are blessed with the support of University of Western Cape (UWC), TsiBA, Durban Uninversity of Technology (DUT), Masiphumelele Library and Siyakhula Centre. All these institutions have generously offered their facilities and time free of charge.
IkamvaYouth is responding to South Africa’s educational crisis. South Africa’s educational system is ranked 97th out of 100 educational systems worldwide. In addition to this abysmal ranking, there is the pervasive problem of unequal access to education, particularly higher education; Only 10% South African youth access tertiary education, of which only a fraction come from townships (SAIRR, 2009), Matric pass rate of 59.9% Black learners compared to 99.6% for White learners in 2008 (WCED, 2008). IkamvaYouth addresses these inequalities and will redress this.
The Winter Schools are a step toward this. They offer space for youth to escape the harsh realities of township life, and while doing so they foster the ambition to succeed and build the capacity of youth to seize the opportunities available to them. The 2011 programme has taken a very career focused approach. Learners have been asked to sign up for different activity streams:
1) Leadership, health and life skills 2) Creative Expression and Arts 3) Media and Journalism 4) Technology and Engineering 5) Environmental Science, Geography and Sustainability 6) Physics and Chemistry 7) History, Social Justice and Political Science 8) Entrepreneurship and Business.
By grouping youth on the basis of their interests we hope to maximize the impact of workshops, excursions and speakers.
The schedules are jam-packed! The morning consists of small-group tutoring sessions focused on securing the literacy and numeracy fundamentals that often inhibit learners from achieving their potentials. Tutors work with learners in small groups, and provide real-time feedback in response to areas of difficulty. The afternoons are filled with a range of enriching workshops and excursions; from Wits University, to the Cheetah Outreach Park, to social entrepreneurship seminars, to satellite and engineering workshops, to pottery, to science practicals, to yoga, to writing, producing and printing a magazine. It is all here!
There is always room for more. If you want to get involved at any of our branches just contact the branch coordinators. Simple as that!
See branch venues and contact information;
Makhaza Branch, Liesel Bakker: liesel@ikamayouth.org, at TsiBA
Nyanga Branch, Nombu Dziba: nombuyiselo@ikamvayouth.org, at UWC
Masihphumelele Branch, Nicolas Commeignes: nicolasc@ikamvayouth.org, at Masiphumelele Library (masiphumelele_map_1.pdf and masiphumelele_map_2.pdf)
Ivory Park Branch, Joe Manciya: joe@ikamvayouth.org, at Siyakhula Centre
Cato Manor Branch, Khona Dlamini: khona@ikamvayouth.org, at Durban University of Technology
IKAMVAYOUTH GAUTENG
WINTER SCHOOL HOLIDAY PROGRAMME REPORT
14-25 JUNE 2010
IkamvaYouth Gauteng once again hosted a very successful winter school holiday programme thanks to the generosity of our supporters and the tireless efforts of an awesome group of volunteers and a highly dedicated group of IkamvaYouth learners.
SUPPLMENTARY TUTORING
The key component of IkamvaYouth’s winter school is the academic support and learners had three sessions of tutoring every day lasting between an hour and an hour-and-a-half per session. A variety of tutoring resources were used including work the learners brought with them, past papers, mock exams and study guides. Regular ‘English Fundamentals’ sessions were held with additional sessions focused on exam preparation. Maths remains the subject for which learners request the most assistance.
WORKSHOPS
Gareth Coatz from the South African Aids Trust ran a workshop with the learners on harassment. He got Ikamvanites buzzing with opinions and energy on the matter, especially on the different experiences of girls and boys. Some useful conclusions were drawn about some strategies for dealing with harassment not least of which a commitment from the learners to speak honesty and respectfully to each other on issues of gender and the different experiences. In addition to these workshops, a number of sessions were helpd on the topics of leadership as followership. ’Who is the thief?’ Respect, and Resolve hosted a Conflict Management session.
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).
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.
Lloyd Lungu