Kwelerha’s Schools and Youth Centre

Schools:

During our first week in the community the volunteers travelled as a group to visit some of the 6 schools that we would be working in during the programme. The schools are all based in the Kwelerha area and are within 30 minutes taxi ride from Jongilanga (our host community) There is Bhongolethu High (Tuba Community), Jongilanga High, Mtunzi Tsolekile (Zozo Community), Zozo Combined (Zozo Community), Gwaba High (Gwaba Community)and Mtyana High (Gwaba Community).

Visiting each school we were initially impressed by our first assessments of the schools, modern brick buildings of a reasonable size, not the run-down and dilapidated buildings that many wrongly assume to be found in rural Africa. However, we soon found that in many cases appearances can be deceiving. Inside the schools we found that they were often lacking in various departments such as facilities, basic amenities, funding, teachers and training for teachers, structured timetables and discipline. The reasons behind these inadequacies are complicated and we have heard many different explanations. In many cases it seems to be the Education Board (in the Eastern Cape that is. Schools may be run differently in other parts of South Africa as they will be under different Educational Boards) which is not providing adequate funding, training for teachers and also failing to manage the schools effectively. For instance, one school has been newly built with several classrooms and space for learners, it looks the part. However, the contractors upped sticks and left before completion of the school because they did not receive payment for their work, leaving the school unconnected to the main power supplies and with no electrical fittings even if they do get connected to the mains.

Another example of the problems that face the schools in the Eastern Cape was highlighted by an article pinned to a notice board in a school. The headline stated ‘140 Teachers get sick pay for 5 years’. The details that followed were just as shocking as the facts were laid bare; it seems these teachers from the Eastern Cape had all been falsely claiming sick pay for 5 years without anyone in the Education Board investigating their claims. But corruption such as this is not just apparent in the Education Board and with certain teachers, as we noted when a teacher informed us that their school had no IT or sports equipment after it had been stolen. They believed it was an inside job by a caretaker as no forced entry was ever discovered. Other issues facing the schools are a lack of teachers to facilitate extra-curricular classes and space/facilities to provide these classes. One school does have a suite of 14 working computers but the frustration is that they have no knowledge within the school to teach IT.

Despite all the hardships that teachers, students and the schools face, they are ploughing on, determined to succeed despite all the apparent odds. We witnessed this undeniable resolve during our initial visits as all the schools welcomed us so warmly, one teacher saying ‘we open our hands to you and you are welcome’. At each school the principle made a fuss over us and official welcoming meetings were arranged with all available staff (and student representatives in some cases). They were pleased with Restless Development’s choice of focusing on Career Guidance, Finance Management and IT Skills as they felt there was a real need for those subjects. Often they would also add further recommendations of areas in which we could assist e.g. extra-curricular activities such as choirs, drama, sports and debating societies (This is how I found myself agreeing to run a rugby training session at Bhongolethu in my spare time, but more on that eventful session in a later post).

The children were also very welcoming and after some initial shyness and awkward staring they would come and talk with us, practicing their English. The younger children would often make a game of chasing our minibus out of the gates and down the road, laughing and waving us off. All in all it was a great insight into the schools in the area and our work places for the coming months. In spite of the issues we knew were facing us we were buoyed by the exuberant welcomes from the schools. The only problem was that after that first week the schools were on holiday for a week (half term). So we had to postpone our excitement of starting work at the schools and instead focused it on working at the Youth Centre.

Jongilanga Youth Centre:

The youth centre, based in Jongilanga, was built by Restless Development a few years ago in order to encourage the capacity building of out of school youth (OOSY) through sexual reproductive health (SRH) and livelihood lessons. The centre is run by a Youth Centre Officer called Nolukanyho, who explained to us the work she had been facilitating and the assistance she needed in providing a service to the community.

 The main challenge we noted was that the youth centre does not have a connection to the main power supply and therefore has no electricity to run computers. For some time they were able to run an extension cable from the nearby clinic to power the centre but for unknown reasons this agreement ceased. As a result, the attendance numbers for local OOSY had slowly decreased to none as they were keen to use the computers and felt there was no point turning up when they knew they could not access computers. It seems that even in rural Africa life can still be dependent on IT and the youth recognise this. Computers are a vital part of their empowerment and development as many careers/higher education centres accept only those with IT skills. It is also a key aspect of the work that ICS and Restless Development are doing in order to train and skill up the youth. So we knew we had our work cut out and had to think creatively to get the OOSY attending the youth centre again, whilst also working out what to do with regards to the power issue…