Empowering South African Youth Through Education

Dear GlobalGiving Donors,

Greetings at the end of the first semester of the school year in Durban!  We have not reported on our mathematics program in awhile, so I wanted to update you on this cornerstone feature of The Umkhumbane Schools Project’s presence in the Cato Manor township community. 

 As you may recall, we have a motto for our maths program: “Not Your Ordinary Math Class.”  And what makes this learning experience more than ordinary?  Surely one key aspect is the amazing team of teachers who have been returning each year to assist with our Friday and Saturday math program. Our teaching assistants do trainings throughout the year in the USP’s teaching mehods, which emphasize problem-solving and learning-by-doing.  This dedicated team loves to teach and loves to help our learners figure out math problems in their own way so that the learning is durable and builds skills.  Several of our math assistants are alums of The Umkhumbane Schools Project who have come back to teach with us out of a sense of gratitude for the impact this program had on their own success in school. 

In this season, we celebrate in particular our math teaching assistant Minenhle Buthelezi, who received his Master’s in Health Sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal just a few weeks ago.  Well Done, Minenhle!

By far the most important ingredient in our math program’s success is the learners themselves.  Our weekend classes are filled with young scholars who stay late on Fridays or walk a distance on Saturdays seeking out the learning that the USP classes have to offer.  Word-of-mouth has attracted learners from several additional schools, some of whom travel an even greater distance to attend.  We have taught for thirteen weekends in this first semester, and average weekly attendance has been 110 Grade 12 learners, 102 Grade 11 learners, and 118 Grade 10 learners each Friday or Saturday.  In short, more than 100 learners in each grade are putting on their uniforms, walking in the heat or cold or rain, and showing up in these numbers during their weekend time, week after week, eager to learn.  Not at all ordinary.

Thanks to the generous, unstinting support of our GlobalGiving donors, this program has been a singular feature of the learning landscape in the Cato Manor township for twelve years – and is still going strong.  Thank you for being our Anything-But-Ordinary donors.  We appreciate you, we could not be doing this without you, and we will continue to keep you posted on what your extraordinary generosity is making possible.

With gratitude from all of us at The Umkhumbane Schools Project,

Martha

Martha Fitzpatrick Bishai
Director 

The Umkhumbane Schools Project

This month at The Umkhumbane Schools Project, we are celebrating with Yanga (pictured here) – and the many other Umkhumbane Schools Project learners who have been busy accepting offers of admission to universities and colleges across South Africa. We are so grateful to all of you in our GlobalGiving family for making these celebrations possible!

Yanga completed his Grade 12 year at Mayville Secondary School last December and has been offered a place at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal (UKZN) to pursue a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering degree.  Not only that, Yanga has also been offered a sought-after Moshal Scholarship!  The USP has been a nominating organization for the Moshal since 2014, and we are so proud of Yanga for earning this award and becoming the USP’s 20^th Moshal Scholar.

When the 2023 school year ended in December, our seniors finished their grueling National Senior Certificate exams and then waited for their results until late in January.  Firm offers of college admission then began coming through and the mad scramble to accept offers and make the transition to college life has been ensuing over the last few weeks.  This has been a busy time for the USP and our rising college students! 

Our learners have been accepted for 2024 to study in fields such as accounting, computer engineering, architecture, chemistry, finance, and IT, and have enrolled at UKZN, the University of Cape Town, the University of Johannesburg, the Durban University of Technology, and the Mangosuthu University of Technology.  We celebrate these hard-earned opportunities for further education and look forward to seeing these bright futures unfold.

Meanwhile, back at the USP, the new school year is up and running.  Our Friday and Saturday maths program has record enrollment this year, with over 500 learners having attended the initial registration day and first classes.  We are bursting at the seams a bit in the community library space that we use for this program and are hoping to expand into another of the larger rooms available there. 

We have also already had two science enrichment programs for our learners with our valued community partners at UKZN and the Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI).  This year’s Grade 8 Girls Groups are commencing this week, and the garden spaces we installed at Bonela Secondary last year are in full bloom!

All of these developments and more are underway thanks to your partnership with the USP through GlobalGiving.  We are eager to bring you along with us on this year’s journey, through this and future reports about all that you are making possible with your generous support for our work.

You are making a difference in many young people’s lives.  We look forward to sharing with you the joy of seeing their smiles, their expanded horizons, and their personal growth in the exciting year ahead.

With heartfelt gratitude,

Martha