Katlehong Athletics Club calls for more school shoes donors
Katlehong Athletics Club need more school donations to add to the 336 pairs that they have collected during the annual school shoe run drive.
The Katlehong Athletics Club (KAC) has kick-started their annual school shoe run initiative in a bid to help many young learners without school shoes.
KAC managed to collect 336 pairs of school shoes during the fundraiser for the school shoe drive at Ramokonopi Section, Katlehong, on December 31.
The club is continuing to collect school shoe donations as it plans to distribute the shoes to deserving learners at various schools that are yet to be identified in February. People who donated are members of the club, other clubs and members of the community.
According to KAC junior coach Jomo Mbele, the shoe drive was the idea proposed by Lwazi Mosheqane, who is a teacher at Alafang Secondary School, a member of KAC and a former treasurer of the club and he is a teacher at Alafang Secondary School.
He came up with the idea to address challenges that learners encounter due to a lack of school shoes.
“We took it as a positive way to give back and help our community. We started in 2018 and more than 500 learners benefited from schools around Katlehong, namely Abraham Hlope Primary School, Chivirikani, Nokulunga, Tamaho, Ekurhuleni School for the Deaf and Palmridge Primary among others,” said Mbele.
He said as the coach of the club he is extremely thankful to the donors because their development is also going to benefit from this initiative.
He noted the initiative is very important to the club because they believe that sports and education are intertwined.
“We strongly encourage all the members of the society to give back to their respective communities. Leaners are the beneficiary of the initiative, their dignity is very important to us. It is very disturbing to see a learner attending school barefoot.
“We also encourage learners to take athletics seriously because they can benefit from scholarships and bursaries. We want to see this grow because we strongly believe that we can help learners in and outside of Gauteng and make it country-wide,” he concluded.
The club is still collecting donations anyone who wishes to contribute can contact the club chairperson Nthabi Msheqane at 073 366 7335 or the secretary Patience Mthembu on 060 617 6834.
For further updates follow Katlehong Athletic Club’s Facebook page.
