A frightening percentage of South African schools are under-resourced and under-performing. Through our educational scholarship and mentorship programme, Sumbandila aims to transform the lives of exceptional children from backgrounds of extreme poverty by creating entrepreneurs and leaders who will one day make significant contributions to their own communities and to Africa.
South Africa has the highest Gini index in the world and the gap between the rich and the poor continues to grow. All of our beneficiaries are selected from deep rural villages, surviving mostly on government grants and many of them orphans. Their families often have no or little experience of tertiary institutes, and a failure rate of 85% at universities across South Africa is mostly due to students floundering in their new environment and having little or no support to manage the pitfalls.
A world class education alongside a strong mentorship programme spanning 5 years secondary school and 3 to 4 years in tertiary education. We have shown that within three years of intervention, deep rural village children can compete with their peers globally on the international Cambridge exams. Our parallel Saturday and Holiday School programme offers intense academic and psycho-social support throughout the secondary and tertiary phases.
We believe in the transformational power of education - the eight-year relationship we have with our students starts a process of positive change not only in the individual, but which influences the people and communities with whom they interact and ultimately we believe that they will not only make significant contributions to their communities and regional economy but will be leaders in our country and on our continent.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).