It has been 30 years that the Sparrow Schools Educational Trust has changed and positively impacted the lives of youths in our community by providing young, disadvantaged South Africans, with cognitive barriers to learning, the opportunity to access quality and accredited education.
The non-profit, non-governmental organisation has done this through a foundation school and a combined technical skills school that offers affordable, quality special needs education, as well as a FET College which provides fully-funded, accredited programmes that includes on-the-job training to disadvantaged youth and persons with disabilities.
Despite challenges faced in the past year, the Melville-based organisation has worked with its partners to ensure a 100 per cent completion rate for students at its FET College, by adopting a blended learning approach, taking educational content online, finding alternative host companies, and even taking care of the nutritional needs. Before lockdown, being at school afforded the children with professional care and educational development, interaction with others (which is vital for their development) and also a guaranteed meal. A number of the school’s students also come from orphanages and places of safety, where going to class was a welcome change.
So the reopening of schools came as a relief to teachers, as they were now able to resume providing children with the support programmes – including for literacy and numeracy, and physical development – required to ensure progress in their development. It has also provided peace of mind to parents, some of whom were essential services workers and had to carry on working during the hard lockdown – while having to make an alternative plan to take care of their special needs children at home.
Sparrow has also been providing food parcels to over 700 families to take care of their nutritional needs since the lockdown began, comprising children from both the Schools and FET. These parcels contain maize meal and tins of food and are aimed at feeding a family of four, though provision is made for extra where it is known to be a larger family.
It is their partnership with various corporate companies including Momentum Metropolitan Foundation that enables them to continue to change lives. Sparrow is of the mind more could be done by corporate South Africa, such as offering bursaries to children at the school, or offering learnership positions to students at the FET, assisting youth with devices and Internet access, or even just making a difference in some way in their industry that makes access to education easier and more affordable. Also, taking a genuine interest in the development of the youth can have a positive longer-term impact on the country’s growth.
