Ikamva Youth’s Ebony Park branch is passionate about education
EBONY PARK – Ikamva Youth urges learners to join them in order to obtain better grades.
Non-profit organisation Ikamva Youth is setting learners up for a fruitful future.
The Midrand Reporter visited the organisation’s Ebony Park branch on 23 January, where branch coordinator Michael Thema explained what Ikamva is all about.
Thema said their aim is to help learners improve their marks in order to get university acceptance or stand a better chance of getting employed. “We facilitate five programmes, namely tutoring, career guidance, mentorship, media image and expression and computer literacy. Our core programme is tutoring whereby we divide the learners into groups of five at each table and lead them towards getting answers themselves, all this is done in a way of questioning them.
“We include our own questioning techniques because it makes it easier for the student to identify where they are struggling.”
Thema added that, with regards to career guidance, they bridge the gap by inviting the necessary professionals to come and advise learners and teach them about their careers of interest. “Then, as part of our mentorship programme, we get professionals to mentor two children. Our requirement as Ikamva is that the mentor should commit to an hour face-to-face session with the learners every month and it can be as simple as job shadowing.
“In the media image and expression programme, we cover areas of arts and craft incorporated with entrepreneurship. This is where learners can express their talents.”
He added that for computer literacy, their Grade 11 learners go for computer lessons every Monday and Wednesdays and learn about Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. “We also invite stakeholders to come and facilitate coding lessons.”
Thema said learners do not have to pay, all they have to do is commit themselves to 75 per cent attendance each term, their sessions are on Tuesdays, Thursday and Saturdays. “Learners then have to submit their results to us for evaluation at the end of each term so that we can identify where they are challenged.
“The community should note that we only take learners in Grade 9 to 11 because we want to monitor the learners’ performance over the long haul. Learners are selected on a first-come, first-served basis and enrolment for term one will close at the end of January, so learners can now apply for term two in March.
Details: Ikamva Youth
www.ikamvayouth.org
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