By Harrison Dax Nash | Charity Director & Project Leader
First and foremost, a HUGE thank you to EVERYONE who donated and supported this project – we made our initial a target of raising $10,000! We have now exceeded our original expectations and managed to raise over £7,000 GBP thanks in totality to all of you reading this new report!
As you may have read in our last update we have decided to extend our each over the next year and so will be continuing with this project! Our primary focus remains the Siyakatala Child & Youth Care Centre where the educational needs of all 34 children remains an area where support is continually required! So please also support the cause over on Global Giving UK between 1st and 8th September for the #BonusWeek campaign where your donations will be able to go 50% further...!
The Siyakatala Centre has been able to source a remedial teacher who is strengthening children within the core areas of numeracy and literacy. This is to compliment the daily homework and study assistance each child receives. This is more needed than ever when we look at the recent results of the Grade 6 national assessments in South Africa which shows that almost 70% fail to meet minimum attainment levels in mathematics and 38% achieving below the required results in their home language.
Siyakatala goes the extra mile to try and give the children in their care every opportunity to achieve to their fullest – in their last school reports one young girl achieved a number of 4 distinctions including an incredible mark of 90% in Life Orientation!
With the children attending a number of 10 schools we still must focus on raising the much needed funds for school fees, uniforms and transportation costs. It is also important to remember we also assist children who require specialised education to overcome learning difficulties, with the Eastern Cape being home to 8% of learners receiving such schooling at this stage.
The centre also classifies therapeutic service delivery as an essential goal for each child within their individual development plan. As such we want to continue in supporting the aim to provide Occupational Therapy to those children who need it!
Our exciting news at this stage is that we have applied for our two oldest boys to attend University next year! This is looking at the focus areas of teaching and human movement science at bachelor degrees! We keep our fingers crossed as recent statistics show that only 17.5% of learners in South Africa qualified for a bachelors programmes following the results of their National Senior Certification (matric) examinations.
What makes the achievements of these children even more remarkable is the trauma they have endured which they refuse to let hold them back from shooting to the moon…such examples as having a boy who came to us whilst living on the street some 5 years ago that will soon be celebrating the completion of his high school career. These inspiring stories fill us with confidence in the work we continue to carry out!
If you see some of the incredible activities and opportunities they now have thanks to the work of Siyakatala you would just be blown away. We have a new video we’d also like to show you attached to this report which shows some highlights from the last year! View it at: Maranatha Care Children You Tube Channel
We also have a brand new website about to be launched at: www.maranathacarechildren.com
We’d also like our supporters to know that whilst this initiative remains our primary goal we also have two other on-going projects. The first is our support of Protea Primary School which provides high quality support to over 60 children (including a group from Siyakatala) but do remain in need for educational resources on a yearly basis. Furthermore we are moving forward with our outreach in the rural area of Nieu-Bethesda – at this stage the children in the local township community only have access to a primary school and we are in the planning stage for new projects in that area. If we receive other grants or sponsorship to assist with schooling needs at Siyakatala we will use any excess funds to support the needs that we have identified at these projects…all still targeting educational service areas!
It is just left for me to say thank you…thank you for taking our hands, for making dreams become possible, for allowing the children who inspire me to know that there are so many people who believe in them…it is that belief that truly helps them defy the odds and move forward with pride and confidence. Dream. Believe. Achieve.
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