By Tanya Harvey | Chairperson
2024 REPORT
HILLCREST ADVICE BUREAU & BURSARY FUND SCHOOLS PROGRAMME
Our School project went really well in 2024. We found the year to go much smoother than 2023 had gone, with less disruptions experienced in schools. The greatest change that we had in 2024 was the addition of a School Fund assistant, Zinhle. Being a native language isiZulu speaker has made Zinhle’s adjustment to our School Fund that much smoother as she has taken over the communication with the various schools that we work with as well as helping us with fittings during school visits. We are beyond grateful for Zinhle’s help and are certain that it is the key factor in what made our year in the school fund run that much easier.
2024 was our year to broaden our project and we thus decided to do a few new schools that year in an attempt to spread the funds and potentially meet some new needy learners. We really enjoyed most of these new schools, as well as our faithful old ones, but in the same breath did have one unpleasant experience at a school that we will not be returning to. Based on our 2023 year, we chose not to do too many High Schools in 2024, as the Primary Schools in our valley tend to be better run schools, more controlled environments and overall simply more pleasant experiences for us as volunteers. We also decided to add underwear to each of our children’s uniform packages, thanks to the Pass the Panties Initiative, and this proved such a blessing to the learners as many a child was without underwear on when we were trying to fit their uniforms.
2024 started off with us once again receiving a list from Hlengiwe Msome, in Ngcolosi. Her zeal for the children of her area is noteworthy and we delight in working with her each year. We then went on to visit 2 of our favourite schools, ones that we cannot help but reach out to year after year. The teams at Laboure Primary School (in Ngolosi) and Mnamatha Primary School (in KwaNyuswa) are organised, always ready for us and so very appreciative for our ongoing relationships with them repsectively. After these 3 deliveries, we began our work with a few new schools. This meant that by the end of April 2024, we had already ordered and delivered/fitted 10 schools uniforms. One of the new schools that we included in these 10 schools was Umzamo Primary School. We so enjoyed working with this school and more so seeing their greatest needs. This specific Primary school is a large school based in KwaNyuswa. The staff that we interacted with and students alike, were very grateful for our uniform donations, interaction with the children as we fitted their new uniforms and overall visit. This new connection, and our opportunity to have visited the school in 2024, opened up the opportunity this year (2025) to put forward their name when contacted by Highbury Primary school to donate to one of their old jungle gyms. This will be done next week and we have no doubt that the school will look after it.
As per last year, we opted to do our own fundraising and collections for school shoes and were thrilled to receive more than 40 pairs of shoes during the year. All of these were matched and fitted onto little feet that had no school shoes on at all or very old ones on.
Between May and November, we visited and fitted uniforms at an additional 7 schools, and we included 1 High School in this mix. The High School that we worked with was Kwatebeni High School in KwaNyuswa and whilst relatively disorganised, we appreciated the vote of thanks from the head master himself as well as a few governing body members.
Lungi Khwela, the Development Services Worker gave us her uniform request list. As usual, Rosemary provided Lungi with these uniforms and Lungi supplied us with photographs of each of the 12 learners.
Nokuthula from the Hillcrest Advice Bureau in KwaNyuswa requested uniforms for a small number of needy learners too. She handled these fittings and too provided us with photographs.
NOTEWORTHY OBSERVATIONS
Our best schools are always those that are prepared for our arrival and have provided us with accurate sizes of their needy children. One such school is Isihlangusabasha, which is a small Junior Primary school in Ncgolosi. The principal was waiting for us in their car park, which overlooks the Inanda Dam. He welcomed us into their lovely, neat little library to do our fittings, where the children were all waiting for us. The kids were cheerful, obviously very needy and so grateful, and the sizes were spot on which is such an enormous help. Another school which we always love visiting is Laboure Primary School. This year was especially special as the visit itself went well (as expected) but when we arrived to do the few exchanges, we were greeted by the learners who handed us thank you notes and cards. This was enormously heartwarming and all thanks to their organized principal who we have come to love over the years of visiting their school, Mrs Mthethwa.
One lowlight for us, and a real challenge that we faced this year was the lack of buy-in from one particular principal. He was overtly rude to Rosemary and the HAB uniforms team and eager to get us off his school grounds in Molweni, even though we were there to bring uniforms for their poorest students. We are unlikely to return to this Senior Primary school next year due to this experience.
One further insight from this years’ school visits has been that we have noticed an increase in children’s understanding of the English language. We believe its reasonable to assume now that most school-attending children, in our Valley of 1000 Hills, from Grade 5 upwards can understand english without the need for a translator. This is really positive despite the generally low level of education that we see in our Valley. Another interesting recent insight is that many children this year especially, are without decent school shoes and without jerseys – we assume this is due to the econmic dip that South Aafrica was riding out last year, as well as the incredibly low levels of unemployment in our Valley.
SUMMARY OF CHILDREN/ FAMILIES REACHED
Rosemary, Caitlyn and Zinhle visited 17 schools to deliver and fit unifroms on children, in total in 2024. In total we thus provided full school uniforms, clothing, to over 375 extremely impoverishedlearners in our Valley of 1000 Hills in 2024.
As usual, another part of our HAB divison is food parcels which go to families in need that surface via our advice section of our organisation where Winnie sees enormous need. This year Winnie directed our food parcels to 4 families who’s situations include the loss of a mother and now 2 very needy children living with a relative, a family who’s child has diabetics and lives without a disability grant, a women with skin cancer but no disablity grant (yet) and finally a lady who hasn’t been receiving a grant however soon will be due to the help of HAB.
Our sincere thanks to our donors, The Solon Foundation, Stanley Raaff Trust, to all those who donated money at our Giving Tuesday Initiative at Richdens Centre in Hillcrest and others who make this programme possible.
Caitlyn de Beer and Rosemary Dickinson
Administrators – School Fund at Hillcrest Advice Bureau & Bursary Fund
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