By Harrison Dax Nash | Project Leader / Charity Director
It has been an interesting time in the political landscape of South Africa. The newly tabled budget saw higher education and training as the fastest-growing spending category. There is a fee-free higher education plan in motion for lower income households after repeated student #feesmustfall protests in recent years.
This ideal at least provides us with the ability to allow of young people to ‘dream big’ in terms of their future goals. We have young people at our youth centre tell us they want to be: a police captain; a veterinary surgeon; a human rights lawyer; one of the country’s leading business men. When our teenagers already have such drive behind them we know that they can be motivated to be the future role models of the new South Africa.
Yet in remains important for us to invest from the foundation phase onwards. I am currently looking at engaging with teachers who can provide additional remedial intervention for our young people who need this. Already your donations are helping fund the psychometric evaluations needed to plan the correct services for those in our care and also enabling doors to be opened for Occupational Therapy and other identified needs.
The above is even more pertinent at this time as since the start of the year we have opened our doors and had a number of 4 more children (aged between 10 and 13) admitted to our youth centre with a further 2 siblings due to be placed in this coming month. All of these children have an educational backlog with home circumstances contributing to them falling behind in their scholastic and development progress. Whilst we can address the emotional needs (with some of our activities seen in photos here!) it always becomes a challenge to assist them to maximize their real potential and this is why we are keeping this project as active as possible to ensure it is fully supported!
A sad challenge remains that primary and secondary education in South Africa does have systemic problems and the country is particularly weak in math and science, even when compared to other developing countries. Yet what we can also ensure our supporters is that we have sought to form relationships with schools best equipped to assist our children, where we work alongside the teachers with a hands-on approach and ensure that they are at least receiving the attention they deserve as we strive to see them truly dream, believe…and ACHIEVE!
Thank you for your support and please spread the word as always! Donate if you can…it all makes a tremendous difference!
Links:
By Harrison Dax Nash | Charity Director / Project Leader
By Harrison Dax Nash | Charity Director / Project Leader
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
