Ravid has juggled her council duties along with her profession at non-profit education organisation Ort South Africa for many years, but recently hung up her councillor’s hat in order for her to fully focus on the vital projects initiated by Ort.
“Ort is an international non-governmental organisation and it runs programmes in 58 countries around the world,” said Ravid.
“One of the organisation’s pilot projects was called Ort Step, which aimed to teach school teachers about technology. The first group of teachers to graduate from this programme in 1995 had the honour of having their certificates handed over to them by Nelson Mandela.”
Ravid continued to speak of the educational and charitable work the organisation has been doing in various disadvantaged areas since then.
“We are currently building an information technology academy which will specialise in programming, as well as training in Microsoft programmes from basic to advanced levels. Another flagship project that is doing very well is our teacher’s empowerment,” Ravid continued.
“Through this project, we train teachers from governmental schools in maths, science and integrated computer technology. Our funder for this project, Bidvest, donated a laptop to each teacher on the course which the teachers were taught to use in class and for content creation.”
These projects are facilitated in every school in Alexandra, including six primary schools and 12 high schools.
Ort has made it its mission to develop empowered and proactive pupils and focuses on life-long learning, thereby addressing skills shortages through education and supporting individuals and communities in an accountable, value-added way.
“We do a lot of work in Alexandra, where education improvement is desperately needed, and this year, our head of department initiated a new project where matriculants from disadvantaged communities receive classes to strengthen their maths and science acumen.
“We currently teach 53 students like these, and it’s amazing. They are so keen and a good number of them are set to achieve distinctions in these subjects by the end of the year.”
Details: www.ortsa.org.za
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