Good academic performance pays-off for Alex school

Good academic performance has finally paid off for some KwaBhekilanga Secondary School pupils as 50 of them will no longer have to walk to school anymore.

This follows a donation of bicycles to the school meant to reward it for academic excellence and also to ease the travel nightmares for its pupils. The donation was made possible by a partnership between the City of Joburg and Qhubeka, a charity that drives change in various less-fortunate communities.

The bicycle donation came from proceeds of an AutoTrader initiative in which the wheels publication last year branded a car with #DriveChange and asked South Africans to create car art on 52 AutoTrader cars in various cities to spice up Mzansi streets as a way to raise money for the bicycle initiative of Qhubeka (which means ‘progress’). Artists had to pay R50 to create the art on the cars and the money went to the bicycle initiative.

The school was selected to receive bicycles based on it being the highest-performing school in Alex in terms of the matric pass rate in both 2014 and 2015, and because the majority of schoolchildren currently walk to school.

The City’s hope is that by providing schoolchildren with improved mobility, they will further boost academic performance as well as encourage a healthy lifestyle. “The City sees the distribution of bicycles to members of the Alexandra community as part of its initiative to promote cycling for affordable mobility and healthy lifestyles,” said the City’s MMC for Transport, Christine Walters at the handover.

She said the bike distribution complemented the cycle lane building programme that was currently being completed between Alexandra and the Sandton CBD.

The City donated one bicycle for every bicycle sponsored and, thanks to the generosity of AutoTrader which donated 100 bicycles, Fluor, 40, and Tarsus also 40, there were 350 bicycles funded by the programme.

Walters said 280 bicycles were allocated to children and 70 to adults who walked between Alex and their places of work in Sandton. A further 290 bicycles will be distributed in Orlando, Soweto where a bicycle distribution programme was launched last year.

Alexandra was identified as one of the EcoMobility world festival’s legacy projects in Sandton last year.

Qhubeka’s executive director, Sarah Phaweni said, as the name indicates, that with their new wheels the children would indeed progress and move forward at school.

AutoTrader’s marketing manager, Tyrone Woods said they instantly fell in love with Qhubeka’s bicycle relief programme when it was presented to them and described it as Qhubeka’s way to help educate the nation. “We are hoping our small part will also help #DriveChange in South Africa too,” he said.