This year’s winter school was a success! We had 55 Nyanga learners and 23 Ikanyezi learners join us for two weeks at the University of the Western Cape.
Inkanyezi Learners
During the morning sessions, the programme offered learners the chance to get extra tutoring on subjects they were having a difficult time with. We were fortunate to have anywhere from 7 to 15 tutors a day to help all the learners.
After lunch the learners had a great opportunity to participate in a wide variety of workshops that were focused on educating and the learners on different things outside of their school subjects. We had everything from Acting to Team Skills Workshops. Workshops included: Art, Drumming, Acting, Team Skills, South African History, Point of View Improv and Drug Awareness
Learners show us their moves during the drumming workshop
In the Point of View workshop learners had the great opportunity to learn more about sexual health and stigma’s associated with HIV by using innovative activities that engaged the learners and made them more comfortable to share their thoughts.
Molly Blank came in to show the learners her new documentary film all about the xenophobic attacks that happened in South Africa in 2008. The learners watched the film and were able to have a question and answer session with the director herself afterwards. See some of their responses here.
Some learners who showed interest participated in a photography workshop which allowed the learners to take home cameras to take shots of the world cup mania in their area.
Sive Bushla, 11th grade ‘Big Vuvuzela’
New Start was also kind enough to come in to offer testing and counsel any learner or volunteer in the programme who wanted to get tested.
One of the opportunities the learners really enjoyed was the access to the computer labs that were made available to them for the whole of the programme. The learners were able to learn the key elements of Microsoft Word and Excel, how to send attachments in emails and basic computer literacy issues. They were really happy to be able to work on their typing skills as well.
We had a number of sponsors that made planning the programme much easier. PicknPay gave us enough to buy everything we needed for tea and snack breaks while Red Hot Catering & Events provided the lunches for all learners and volunteers at a convenient cost. Fedics sponsored one day’s lunches for all involved in the programme. And of course, UWC offered the space to make all of this possible.
Learners, for the most part, only had good things to say about the programme. There were some ideas that would make next year’s programme better. Mostly, learners wanted to see more tutoring subjects available. We would have loved to see this too, but unfortunately we didn’t have enough tutors comfortable teaching all the subjects. Hopefully next year, that’ll be different!
Lloyd Lungu