Saturday classes benefit learners from Alex and other townships
ALEXANDRA – The effects of a prolonged lockdown on the education of the youth are being felt more severely in the townships than anywhere else
Learners from Alexandra are part of the township youth that benefit from a Saturday and Holiday School programme being run by the Tomorrow Trust.
The Alex learners are part of a group from other townships such as Diepsloot, Thembisa, Soweto and Daveyton that attend the Tomorrow Trust being run at schools such as King Edward VII High School in Houghton, Crawford College in Sandton, Maryvale College in Orange Grove and Redhill in Rivonia.
As the school calendar has been heavily impacted by the four months of crushing lockdown restrictions, the Houghton-based NPO has strengthened its multi-pronged approach to supporting orphaned and vulnerable children on their educational journey.
“The last four months have thrown open the playbook on how we should be addressing the educational challenges facing these learners and students in our townships,” said James Donald, CEO for the Tomorrow Trust, a non-profit organisation with 15 years’ experience in educating under-resourced youth.
Part-funded by the Datatec Education and Technology Foundation, which supports educational organisations in under-resourced communities across South Africa, the Trust aims to develop both academic and life-skills proficiencies in children referred to it through the Department of Social Welfare and via feeding programmes run through several township-based schools.
Donald said the NPO has had to respond to a rising lack of access to basic food, hygiene equipment, winter clothing, online learning and psychosocial support. “We’re addressing issues beyond the obvious educational need,” he said.
“For instance, we’ve noticed an increase in after-hour calls our college/university students are making to a psychologist available through a 24-hour cellphone line we provide.”
The Trust has also delivered more than 4 000 self-care packages to students, the contents of which included sanitisers, masks and food vouchers.”We have a moral imperative to act quickly and adapt what we thought worked previously, to try and lessen the impact these youngsters are facing and will continue to face.”
The Trust has been stepping up to the plate from the start, and only a few days into the original Level 5 lockdown at the end of March, the NPO had frozen traditional programme rollouts, ensuring instead that its junior- and senior-level learners had academic notes, social-emotional activities, much-needed food parcels and hygiene packs.
A month or two into lockdown, its team of 16 full-time staff, all working remotely from home, had created a new six-month plan that would re-emphasise the Trust’s mission of providing holistic educational support. The re-adapted school-learner support saw the NPO providing each household with food parcels, hygiene packs, winter clothing, stationery and textbooks, as well as educational toys.
Senior-level learners were being encouraged to attend virtual classes, to get access to WhatsApp groups moderated by teachers, and to participate in WhatsApp webinars focused on career development and nurturing socio-emotional skills. To facilitate this, the Trust provided senior-level learners with 30GB of data each month.
“Unfortunately, access to data has been an issue for our college and university students, as some learning institutions haven’t followed through on the initial 30GB of data they provided in May. So we’re addressing this with each student on a case-by-case basis, by buying data for them and looking into how we can get them access to a device of their own too.”
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