The classrooms at our partner schools have old and dilapidated doors and there has been no money to repair them for nearly a decade! This makes these spaces cold, drafty, and depressing -- and ill-suited to the beauty of our new school gardens. As winter approaches in South Africa, the USP is launching The Doors Project to provide 50 new classroom doors for installation at our schools. The cost of $80 per door will include the door, hardware, vibrant paint, and installation for each one.
This project will solve a long-standing problem at two under-resourced schools in the Cato Manor township area of South Africa: lack of funding to maintain adequate school infrastructure and welcoming spaces for learning. Classrooms at our schools have extremely dilapidated classroom doors, with huge holes, broken hardware, and degraded paint. As a result, the classrooms are cold, drafty, noisy, and not conducive to focused, healthy, happy learning or a sense of pride in the school space.
The Doors Project will solve this problem by providing 50 brand new classroom doors to these two schools, with vibrant paint, hardware, and installation included. The doors will be sourced by local suppliers and installed by local tradesmen, thereby giving an added boost to the local economy. These classroom doors face outwards to open courtyards and will be visible to all visitors, thereby transforming not only the interior learning spaces but also the schools' overall appearance and spirit.
Our programs are bringing in significant educational resources to be shared among a group of deeply under-resourced, marginalized South African schools. We not only provide learner programming in academics and college guidance, but also bring desperately needed financial assistance to our schools in the form of teacher salaries and infrastructure grants. All of this can transform a whole community and is a model for positive change in other disadvantaged settings, in South Africa and beyond.
