A project of Thembalitsha Foundation
NPO No.  007 490

The Challenge

The Western Cape boasts some of the most prestigious private schools in the country. Sadly, it is also the home of a dangerously high dropout rate.  The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) figures place it at least 55%.  The picture on the ground is even more distressing: out of a typical class of 200 Grade 8 learners who begin high school in the Cape Flats, only 40 may write their matric exams four years later.

The reasons vary: teenage pregnancy in girls, drugs and gangsterism in boys.  However, the overriding reason seems to be a lack of value placed on education.  Young people abandon their studies in light of the need to assist families in need of income, look after their younger siblings and nurse ailing grandparents.  Others escape poverty and abuse and turn to a life on the streets where they spend years perfecting the art of survival and a hand-to-mouth existence.

This is a group of vulnerable youth, in danger of turning to a life of crime, abuse and poverty.  Their only hope is to complete their education and become employable, productive members of society.

However, mainstream schools are ill-equipped to deal with the complexities which these young people may be dealing with. In addition, many of them are older when they are able to return to school, but no public school is obliged to enrol a youth over 20. Despite having reached the legal adult age (18), they are emotionally and academically immature and in need of a nurturing, caring environment in which to make up the years lost. Without an education, they lose hope of ever making it in the real world and the downward spiral of socially unacceptable, negative coping mechanisms begins to take place.
 
The School Of Hope: an important solution

Our Vision is to offer hope through education for vulnerable youth, through encouragement, special education and inspiring them to live a life of destiny and purpose!

The School of Hope has been registered as a special-needs independent school by the Western Cape Education Department (Registration number 13/3/1/165).

Since February 1999, the School of Hope has been offering young people the opportunity to complete their education.

 We offer personalized, individual education to vulnerable youth. As a special needs school, our learners enjoy individual attention. We have small classes, with the support of international and local volunteers, who assist the teachers with the problematic learners in each class. This is conducive to a trusting learning environment, allowing our age-disadvantaged learners to participate in class, safe from the ridicule they would receive had they attended a main-stream classroom with learners who are two / three years younger than they are. Youth who would otherwise be at home or on the streets are enrolled and are aiming for Grade 12!

Our school has become indispensable in the community. The learners who attend our school would have nowhere else to go in order to complete their education. Our school has expanded to offer grade 10 -12, making it possible for those youth, who would never be able to complete their schooling, to finish it in this specialised environment.  We are unique in that we accept youth of all ages and backgrounds without prejudice, including those under house arrest, those previously incarcerated, youth with children of their own, youth who have been on the streets, in short - any youth who chooses to complete their education as opposed to going back to a life of crime, unemployment and poverty! We could not be doing anything more significant for South Africa today.

Profile of our learners

Our learners may be former street children, rehabilitated drug addicts or come from abusive, neglectful homes.  Some are simply in need of a nurturing, family-like environment in order to complete school successfully. Many of our learners come from different childcare institutions and homes for older youth.

Those who live with their parents may experience poverty and hunger on a daily basis. Most have experienced gang life or are escaping the pull of a local gang. As a result of all or some of these factors, these young people have missed a substantial amount of their education and may be up to six months to three years older than the other learners in their class. 

Most face life in less than favourable, sometimes appalling living conditions that make homework and studying very challenging, not to mention having to cope with the stress of poverty, fear and hunger on a daily basis. An unreliable transport system and taxi violence, gangsterism and the dangers of walking home alone after school in crime-riddled areas, add to the difficulties our students face daily in their effort to attend school regularly.
 
What we do
We restore hope: Trauma, abuse and street life all contribute to a negative self esteem and our first aim is to restore a sense of hope in our learners through mentoring and individual, personal care at school.

We offer personalised, individual education in a family-like environment: We are a special needs school and our learners enjoy individual attention. We have no more than 23 learners per class.  

We provide a safe, understanding environment to assist the learners to make up the years they have lost. 

Curriculum

We comply with the Western Cape Education Department National Curriculum.

We currently offer:
General Education and Training - Grade 8 - 9
Further Education and Training - Grade 10 – 12

Learning Areas:

Business Sciences
(Economics, Accounting and Business studies)

Service Sciences
(Consumer Studies, Tourism and Hospitality)

Looking ahead
Our dream is to educate the young people of the notorious Cape Flats and provide those who have been disenfranchised and rejected by the mainsteam education system with a place of learning where they can grow and develop into productive, employeable citizens of this country.

We hope to expand to a school of 100, and then to develop more schools like this one in other high-risk communities where many of the youth may never finish their education.

Ultimately, it is up to each learner that comes to our school to make the most of this opportunity, but we endevour to provide excellent educational opportunities and a caring, nurturing and non-judgemental environment in which every one that wants to achieve the goal of obtaining their matric diploma will be able to reach their goal (no matter how long it takes).

HIV/Aids education
Teenagers are still the fastest growing group of people being infected with the HIV virus today. Most of our learners come from a background lacking in strong role models, caring adult supervision and on-going guidance. Many of those who have lived on the streets have experienced the horrors of sexual abuse and prostitution. We are committed to on-going sex and sexuality education and partner with other education agencies to change attitudes towards casual and promiscuous sex amongst our learners. Testing is encouraged and facilitated and youngsters are accompanied to local clinics for medical examinations if they suspect they are infected with a sexually transmitted disease (STD) or suspect they are pregnant. In addition, we host a Voluntary Testing and Counselling clinic, providing the opportunity for the entire school community to be tested for hiv / aids.  Since we are under the same umbrella organisation as ThembaCare (palliative care for babies and children living with HIV/AIDS) we not only have access to information but work side-by-side with living examples of the effects of this epidemic, further helping us drive the lessons home.

Feeding
Since many of our learners do not receive regular meals at home, we also provide one meal and a fruit snack at school daily.  It is crucial that everybody gets something nutritious to eat on a daily basis. We also provide food hampers to families who need assistance in this area.

Measuring our success
As long as we continue to exceel the national pass rate, we will consider ourselves to have achieved our goals.

This year, our school is packed to capacity and we are constantly turning away students. This is because the community has become inspired by those they have seen leave our school having successfully completed the school year. While the drop- out rate in the Western Cape is 55%, our schools overall pass rate for 2006 was 78%,  2007 was 68% and 2008 87.5%.  However, any child enrolled in our school, and therefore not on the streets, is a success to us.


We do not have enough place to accommodate all the learners that wish to attend our school, which means we have made an impression on the community at large and many more youth than we can currently service have been inspired to complete their schooling. This tells us we are achieving our goal of getting vulnerable youth back in school.

Funding
We receive donations in kind from corporate entities and a modest subsidy from the Western Cape Education Department, which barely covers one teacher’s annual salary.

We make requests on a daily basis to corporates and individuals and our school has received donations of food, stationery, white boards, some funding to upgrade the classrooms, computers and IT equipment and a security system. We also have a debit order campaign, currently bringing in about R3,000-00 monthly. This only helps us with the day-to-day running costs of the school, but is not even close to covering the teachers’ salaries.

Case Histories – Currently enrolled learners

The School of Hope has had the privileged of education about 400 learners from difficult and sometimes despairing situations. Below are some of the inspirational stories of hope and courage that make our school worth supporting.

Dawood van der Fort (19) grade 12
I was doing my grade 11 year at Bridgetown High School but I did not do any work and the teachers ignored me.  I went to school to make money on the playground to support my dagga habit.

I was a gang leader. We used to rob people to make money to buy guns and drugs.  I used to fight a lot with other gangsters.  I was eventually expelled from Bridgetown High, but a teacher referred me to the School of Hope.  I also met a girl who encouraged me to change my life. I stopped meeting with my gang and stayed indoors for a while.

At the School of Hope, they know how to work with people like me . They are always encouraging and they don’t think negatively about me. The small classes help me to focus more on my schoolwork and the teachers make time for me, to help me.

Future Plans:  When I finish school, I want to be a business man, with my own business. I want to study business management at a college. I want to help my community deal with unemployment.

Cial Hendricks (18) grade 12
My family is from Kewtown. My mom and dad were never married and when I was 12 years old my father went to prison.  My family had told me that he was in the navy and working at sea or in the army, so I only found out three years into his sentence that he was actually incarcerated.  I found out through a friend and it was very traumatic for me.  In the same year, the curriculum changed and I was disorientated.  At the end of the year I failed Grade 10.  My cousin was a learner at the School of Hope and she encouraged me to enrol.  Since being at this school, my marks, my self esteem and my emotional life have all improved.  I feel like I am a better person now.  The staff as well as the other learners have helped me. My fellow learners have also struggled through difficult situations and we support each other.

Future Plans:  Cial is keen on computers and for this reason he is also known at school as “Bill Gates”.   When he completes Grade 12 in 2009, he either wants to pursue a career in IT or work in the tourism and hospitality industry.  Says Cial: “I hope I can have a successful career so I can help my mother.”

Shanudiem Gerber (17) grade 10
I live at Marsh Memorial Home but my family is from Delft.  I have been in a children’s home since I was 11 years old.  In my family home I was physically abused and I ran away when I was 10.  I would have spent the night on the streets but a security guard from Nazareth House found me and took me to a social worker.  I was at a public school, but I was very unhappy.  I did not feel that they treated me the same as other learners.  At the School of Hope I have improved a lot in my attitude and in my school work.  The small classes and personal attention make a big difference to me. I am now very enthusiastic about my school work. The teachers are very patient with us.  The encouragement we receive daily really helps me.  This school is like a home for me because of the care and the love in this place.

Future Plans:  I want to be a presenter on TV!  People tell me I have the right characteristics for this type of work.  I like to talk and that might be the right thing for television.

Nigel Prins (21) grade 11
I came to the School of Hope because I wanted to make something of my life.  If I look back at my life and what it was like: it was a hard life.  I worked for a merchant when I was 12 years old to support my own TIK, dagga and Mandrax habit.  By the time I was 15 I was also doing heroin and cocaine.  My family drank a lot and we had no fixed dwelling.  When I turned 18, I realised this was not the life I wanted and I desired to leave drugs but had no funds to go to a rehabilitation centre.  I had faith to change and by the grace of God and people who prayed for me I stopped using drugs.  When I found out about the School of Hope in my community, I enrolled myself and started my schooling over from Grade 8.  It was hard to learn because of the years I had spent on drugs. However, I started to get my memory back, my vocabulary improved and I made progress in my reading.  Today I am in Grade 11 and I see myself working and helping my mother in the future.

Future Plans:  I believe my purpose in life is to become a pastor and help other people to change their circumstances.  I would like to study tourism at Cape College when I complete my Grade 12 year in 2010.

Khumbula Mndende (18) grade 11
I enrolled at the school of hope in 2007. I had missed a lot of school because my family moved around a lot when I was young. At the time I was living in a boarding facility for young men and the supervisor referred me to the School of Hope because I was a year behind and struggled with English, making it difficult for me to attend a mainstream school.
The School of Hope has filled all the gaps in my education. I am doing well here and am more confident about my future.

Lionel Solomons (19) grade 11
I came to the School of Hope in 2006. I had previously been in a mainstream school but I dropped out in 2004 because I was a drug addict. I was using drugs for fun but this had a very bad effect on my education. I was never in class, I vandalised the school and the teachers rejected me and refused me entry to the school. Eventually I was expelled and dropped out for a year. I tried to work but without an education, I got hard work with little pay. This was my future until the boss told me to go back to school. I was accepted at the School of Hope. In the small classes I get more attention from the teachers and I feel I can express myself here. I am no longer on drugs and I am living at a hostel with other guys like me.

Future Plans:   I am looking forward to a future as a pastor.