This week is the first Business Meeting of the year.
You will notice that I have made a number of changes to the blog including separate pages for Projects...just click on the project name. I have also included photographs and links on those pages where appropriate. If you are the convenor for a specific project and you want changes to the page or want something added please email me. Also if there is a project that doesn't have a page please write something and I will add a new page.
We are limited to 10 pages on the blog but that doesn't stop other Avenues of Service from having pages. So if you have something to say for PR or Foundation etc just let me know and I will put it on a page that would appear separately from Projects.
Last week Steve Du Plessis and I represented District at the launch of EduC8. This is what it was all about:
BUSINESS STEPS IN TO HELP MATRICS WITH MATHS AND SCIENCE REVISION!
With exam season approaching, South Africa’s fourth mobile operator 8.ta in partnership with Primestars is launching a nationwide maths and science revision campaign to help disadvantaged Grade 12 learners.
Each revision session will be filmed from a single venue and then simultaneously broadcast to a network of digitised SterKinekor theatres throughout South Africa. The revision sessions will run every Sunday from the 31st July until Sunday 2nd October 2011. The “theatre of learning concept” will engage learners in entertaining and educational networking opportunities which are broadcast in 15 SterKinekor theatres nationwide. Subject experts will be available at each movie venue to assist and answer questions from the learners.8ta will also provide refreshments and Samsung will distribute comprehensive summary of study notes to all learners attending. Gifts such as cell phones, Casio scientific calculators, math sets and stationery will be given to the learners. Through an organisation called Studietrust, five bursaries from the Sasol Inzalo Foundation have been secured to be given to qualifying project participants. SABC will partner this initiative by alerting learners and encouraging their participation and attendance.
BHP Billiton will be funding buses to transport the learners to the various cinemas. Schools selected to attend the revision sessions hail from the Department of Basic Education’s list of previously disadvantaged schools, most of which are based in townships. They will also provide pre recorded DVD’s for learners in rural areas who are unable to attend the revision classes.
Stephen Blewett, 8.ta Executive Marketing and Sales says: “As a relatively new brand, 8.ta will continue to identify projects that afford us the opportunity to make a positive difference in our communities. We all need to acknowledge that maths and science education is the foundation for so many jobs in our economy. Increasingly these subjects are a critical component of getting ahead and 8.ta is proud to be part of this youth initiative.”
Dr Xolani Mkhwanazi, Chairman of BHP Billiton South Africa, is quoted as saying: “At BHP Billiton, we believe in resourcing the future. What better way to do this than empowering our youth by
providing intensive Matric Math and Science Revision sessions. BHP Billiton has sponsored this initiative by chauffeuring the children to and from the cinemas because we are passionate about
youth development. If we are to transform South Africa, pushing it to greater heights than ever before, giving all who live here equal opportunities to grow and succeed, then we need to start at the beginning. We need to start with education.”
Ntutule Tshenye, Corporate Citizenship, Samsung Africa Regional Headquarters says “At Samsung we are interested in developing young skilled leaders in Africa. One of our goals is to develop 10 000 Electronic Engineers across Africa by 2015 through our Samsung Engineering Academy. A strong Maths and Science foundation is critical for students to succeed in the Engineering field, as well as in many other careers. Through the Educ8 Matric Maths and Science Revision program we are raising awareness of the importance of Maths and Science and providing students with the opportunity to improve their performance in these subjects. We believe that these kinds of sustainable partnerships are fundamental to the development of Africa’s future thought leaders”.
Yvonne Kgame, Executive: Innovation and Editorial at SABC states: “The SABC endeavours to become a catalyst for change and a proud agent of social action in the development of our future African scientific genius and wisdom. There is genius in all of us. We can all master Science and Mathematics if we pull together to unleash the very core of that genius which is a divine gift in each and every soul.”
Martin Sweet, Managing Director of Primestars Marketing, cautions: “If we don’t commit to improving the skills and expertise of our youth, we will not be able to strengthen our country’s economy”. He urged Matrics to take advantage of the initiative. “Heita Matrics! Improve your marks in Math and Science! The end of year examinations are just around the corner and this is an initiative to help you prepare yourselves.”
Learners wishing to register to attend the revision sessions at a Ster Kinekor cinema, or Principals or Teachers who would like more information, can call 081 445 9233. Alternatively SMS your name, contact number and school to 081 445 9233 and you will be contacted. You can also register by sending an email to matricrevision@gmail.com. Seats are limited.
Where angels tread
Ilitha school teaches children in a sheet metal shed outside Cape Town, South Africa.
Every day, 85 children file into a shed made of sheet metal, stack their backpacks neatly on the floor along one wall, and take their seats at brightly painted desks arranged in a circle. To them, this sparse enclosure is no shed at all – it’s school.
A student arranges letters to form words at Ilitha. Photo by Rachel Craig
Surrounding the structure and two adjacent ones is a high fence that secures the grounds. The school stands amid 10 square miles of one-room shanties that make up Khayelitsha, an impoverished township just outside Cape Town, South Africa. With the sun beating down on the flat metal roofs of the crowded houses, this vast yet isolated region of poverty and unemployment seems an unlikely place to find three-year-olds learning to spell in an accelerated literacy program. But Christina Jita and the three-room school she founded – called Ilitha, or “light” in Xhosa – belie these first impressions.
She recounts the story – a simple tale of a school that rose up out of the dust to transform hopelessness into promise for hundreds of Khayelitsha kids and their parents.
Jita, a mother of four, has been deeply troubled by the steady stream of young children wandering the dirt streets of Khayelitsha with no structure to their lives. About 10 years ago, while she was working on her teaching degree, she began to improvise a learning center in her small, barren backyard. For the first four years, Jita’s “school room” was a patch of dirt in a squatters’ camp between shanties. There were no indoor facilities. She enlisted the help of a local church to raise small donations, and with that meager funding, rented the garage-size shed we are standing in. With us is Gavin Schachat, a retired Cape Town retailer who joined the Rotary Club of Sea Point in 2007 with the goal of helping to coordinate projects such as this one.
“The parents don’t know how to help a child with homework, or what is a crayon, so I have to teach the parent with the child,” Jita recalls. “I’m all alone, then others come to help – my neighbors, then volunteers from college.”
Sea Point club member Rodney Mazinter, who has accompanied Schachat to Ilitha today, picks up the story. “Our club’s involvement with Ilitha and Christina came about in a most peculiar way,” he says. Tasha Rijke Epstein, a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholar sponsored by the club, had a friend at the University of Cape Town who was volunteering at Ilitha and invited her to come along one day. “Tasha discovered that they had nothing they needed to teach children at Ilitha. There was one dedicated woman, Christina, and a few helpers, and nothing more. She asked us if we could provide some of the basics that were lacking – paper, crayons, equipment, shelves, toys, a refrigerator, and so forth. We met with Christina, visited Ilitha, and made an effort to help out.”
Transformation
The club’s interest might have waned after an initial round of contributions, Mazinter says. “Then Gavin came on the scene. And once he went out to the school, he grabbed hold of the concept and wouldn’t let it go.”
A self-effacing man in his mid-60s, Schachat comes across as the epitome of reserved civility, but Jita saw something else: his tenacity, which matched hers. Once he became director of projects in the Sea Point club, Ilitha’s transformation began in earnest. The first goal was to enlarge the space.
“These children were crammed in,” Schachat recalls. “No running water, barely enough light. We had to improve the facilities.”
There were obstacles. For all her determination and single-handed achievements, Jita felt insecure in the company of men, who occupy a dominant role in Xhosa society. Early on, Schachat asked for her advice on the expansion. “No, no, I can’t advise,” she told him. “I’m only a woman.”
But Schachat wouldn’t accept that. “You’re a very powerful woman,” he said. “Look what you’ve done and what you’re doing.” Over time, Jita began to see herself through Schachat’s eyes. She became more assertive in finding ways to renovate her school and, in the process, she and Schachat became friends. He visited her home and her church. They worked together, and she helped him navigate an unfamiliar culture.
Early on, four shacks tightly surrounded the one-room school, leaving no space for growth. When Schachat suggested buying the shanties from the owners, Jita explained that in Khayelitsha, the community elders – all men – and the church have to be consulted on such matters.
“We were taking something of a risk,” Schachat recalls. “The alternative, though, was unacceptable – to leave all these children crowded together in one room.”
Jita prevailed on the elders to sign an agreement that would allow Ilitha to purchase the shacks. Donations, including some from the Sea Point club, covered the US$50-$100 price of each structure. The shanties were torn down, and expansion plans got underway.
The sequence of events that followed resembled a Frank Capra movie, complete with unexpected heroes, heated conflict, seemingly insurmountable obstacles, and a triumphant populist final curtain.
The wild-card hero was a Korean Rotarian, Jin Yun-Suk, who had recently joined the Sea Point club. He persuaded four clubs in Korea to contribute a total of $18,000 to help build two new classrooms. The Sea Point club raised an additional $35,000 and hired a trusted contractor.
"Children make the connection. Their eyes light up when it begins to click."
But his efforts, and those of his fellow Rotarians, soon collided with the agenda of St. Michael’s, an Anglican church that’s a strong force in Khayelitsha. When the priest insisted that the church control the funds that had been raised, the project seemed doomed.
Meanwhile, a delegation of Rotarians from Korea was on its way to Khayelitsha. “Christina was so stressed, she couldn’t sleep at night,” Schachat recalls. “That made two of us. Finally, at a fiery meeting with the church, I stood up and announced, ‘I don’t need this! We don’t need this!’ I turned to leave with Christina and our Sea Point group. I was fuming.
“It was no bluff. The priest must have known it. He finally called out to us as we neared the door and relented, just a few hours before the Korean delegation was scheduled to arrive. When they showed up, we opened the champagne and put on quite a ceremony.”
Now Ilitha is a flourishing preschool, or crèche, as it’s called locally. Children play on a jungle gym and swings installed by Sea Point club members. The two newer buildings and original shed-like structure are fully equipped with reading and teaching materials, shelves, running water, carpeting, and desks.
When you first observe a group of three-year-olds at Ilitha sitting in a circle on the ground, reaching for the alphabet letters that are spread before them, you could easily mistake the activity for a game. But as the teacher pronounces each letter and the children repeat the sounds as they pull in the correct ones, you recognize that they’re learning to spell and form words at a remarkably young age.
“GGGG,” the teacher says to one preschooler, using the hard sounds for the consonants. With an “ehhhhh” and a “ttttttt,” the girl pronounces and assembles the word get , and accepts the teacher’s applause with a grin.
This method, Souns for Literacy, is the innovation of another Rotarian: Brenda Erickson, a member of the Rotary Club of Peachtree City, Ga., USA, who is married to a South African. A Montessori-trained teacher, she knew that children at this age learn with their hands, so she developed the program to reinforce the relationship between tactile and mental recognition.
“Given a carload of information, you can’t process it at that age,” Erickson explains. “But given letters that match sounds, with a lot of repetition, these children make the connection. You can see their eyes light up when it all begins to click. Letters become words, words become sentences, and they’re well on their way to reading.”
With 11 official spoken languages in South Africa, the challenge of teaching children to read is especially daunting. But an “mmm” is an “mmm” in all languages, and Souns, for that reason, is a universal tool.
Erickson has introduced the program in many preschools in the Western Cape Province and Pretoria, but her ties to Jita and Schachat are special. Ilitha was the earliest adopter of Souns in South Africa. Jita understood the value of teaching language phonetically and took to the program at once.
Funding
Like Jita, Erickson recognizes the intensity beneath Schachat’s serene exterior. “That man is as passionate as any I’ve met. He just won’t quit trying to help Ilitha in any way he can,” she says.
Funding remains a problem for the school, which hasn’t been able to build a kitchen or replace portable toilets with indoor ones. “The goal has always been to make this self-sustaining, so that Christina doesn’t have to depend on handouts,” says Schachat. Recent developments hold promise. After years of delays and numerous inspections, the Department of Social Development recently registered, or accredited, Ilitha. That action officially sanctions the school, enabling it to apply for financial support in the form of subsidies for each child.
Another result is that Jita will finally earn a decent salary, be able to hire more trained teachers, and possibly expand the school’s real estate even more.
Out on the playground, the students, all in school uniform, line up to put on a show for Schachat and other visitors. Suddenly the air fills with Xhosa clicks as they sing in their native language, then in English, dancing and clapping. Children’s songs like “Hokey-Pokey” get an up-tempo Aretha Franklin treatment. The schoolyard rocks. The visitors sway in time. The children spin and laugh as Jita stands by, beaming with pride.
This school is her gift to them, and their joy is a gift to us all.
