Thursday, August 6, 2015

People are the most important asset any NPO

1:19 AM | Posted by Gabrielle Wills | | Edit Post
Over the past 2 and half years, I have been focusing on my PhD in education economics. Taking on this task was largely inspired by the reality that we can "help 100" but not help millions. Getting out our youngest beneficiary out of the poor excuse of a school that she was originally attending was a great victory; positioning her in a former model C school happened after 5 applications later at different schools and a final plea for help from a headmistress! Wealthier schools just don't want "poorer" children because they are "weaker" and have "family background problems". Our youngest beneficiary however has proved them all wrong. But in many ways, I also felt a sense of great sadness in this victory because at the previous school she attended remains the rest of her classmates, and overall another 999 students or so. She was the likely one to get out of there.

Without being as actively engaged in the NPO beyond an administrative level for a little while, a person that I greatly admire has poured herself into making the lives of one family so much better. She has for all intensive purposes taken on the role of mother and mentor to two of our girls, dropping them at school everyday, fetching them from school, taking them to extra lessons and pouring into them all her professional experience in education. She aims to provide the best for these girls. I am extremely grateful for Dr. Caroline Goodier.  She was actually my first "boss" at UKZN and is a brilliant, passionate woman for whom I am extremely grateful. There are many other friends that worked under Caroline at the Writing Centre at UKZN. Many of them are making a difference in South Africa and I wonder if Caroline was the key person who rubbed off on us all.

I realise more than ever that a great NPO is only great because of the people that serve faithfully (and for no reward). Thank you Caroline.

Gabrielle



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Monday, July 7, 2014

Our Youngest Beneficiary Doing us Proud

6:30 AM | Posted by Gabrielle Wills | | Edit Post
This year, with the help of Rotary's Ethekwini's Educational Trust, we have been able to send a new little member of our Micah6 clan to a great primary school in Durban. She was previously in a very disadvantaged school in the Mayville area with over 50-60 students in a class that provides sub-standard tuition for its students. It was quite evident that this sparkly little life was being stifled by an environment that fails to provide even the most basic education needs to its learners.

Months of intensive efforts by Caroline Goodier went into preparing little Sphe for her new school to fill in learning gaps before starting grade 5 in her new school. For over a year Caroline has been coaching her on reading and comprehension, taking her to and from extra mathematics tuition weekly and exposing her to a world of general knowledge.  The hard work has paid off.
Little Sphe is top of her class in mathematics and has developed an amazing way with words, English words! Below is a little poem she wrote recently which amazes us all.

Leaves
The leaves sang
through the wind and danced
through the wind and whistled
through the wind and when they were tired
they stood up quietly.

They slept
and when they woke
they started again making a loud noise
and even woke up
two pretty birds.

They have pretty dresses
in all seasons and they continue singing
with their beautiful voices
from the trees.

Thank you to Caroline who continues to play a mothering and teaching role in Sphe's life, fetching her daily from school and overseeing her homework daily. You have gone beyond the call and redeemed the potential of yet another life.
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Wednesday, February 19, 2014

All Micah6 girls who wrote the NSC matric exams passed

12:42 AM | Posted by Gabrielle Wills | | Edit Post
It has been almost 18 months since I last posted a blog on Micah6. The main reason for this is that last year was just truly difficult in terms engaging in efforts to support Sparks Estate Secondary, the school to which most of our learners belong. Our principal was suspended from the school for the majority of the year and then we faced untold challenges as a result. This is a story for another blog post. It is easier to write the story now as it has been resolved finally. Instead I would like to focus on the good news: We have reached the end of the first leg of the Micah6 journey with success.  

All Micah6 girls who wrote the NSC matric exams passed in some form or another! 


Hlengiwe and Avela both obtained a bachelors pass (and has been accepted into a degree course at university).Nonkululeko, Nokwanda and Nosihle obtained a Diploma pass and 
Nomfundo obtained a pass for higher certificate. 

If one considers that we lost only two girls along the way then we have had a 75% success rate on the original group who started at Sparks in 2009. I am very proud that Hlengiwe has started Psychology at UKZN as of last week. Just to put this achievement in context, four of these girls have been double orphans from early childhood and all live in abject poverty in the informal settlement of Cato Manor. Their circumstance alone creates major challenges for them which are difficult for anyone to overcome. Studying for exams is about candlelight, finding time in the midst of violence and daily chores such as collecting water. Studying for exams is about overcoming textbook shortage challenges and trying to understand the material given often substandard teaching, striking teachers or just no teacher at all.  

Many people however often scoff and reflect that the matric exam has no meaning or real value. Especially in recent months critics have lambasted the current matric pass mark requirement and often erroneously say that it is only 30% and that the matric pass mark was much higher in the past. Both of these statements are in fact not true. As Stephen Taylor (advisor at the DoE,  good economist and friend) responds when debunking these two myths in a recent article for the Mail and Guardian: 



"Myth 1: "The pass requirements were higher in the past." This is simply not true: the pass mark for a subject was never 50%. Not during apartheid. Not in recent years. Never.
Myth 2: "The pass mark is 30%." In fact, the NSC requires six subjects to be passed, three with at least 40% and the remaining three with at least 30%.


People are asking for the pass mark to be raised to 50%. Well what would the implications of this be?  He estimates that about 120 000 pupils would have passed matric in 2013, compared with the 440 000 who did in fact pass.  This means that less than 20% of all South African youths would successfully complete matric. 
He then goes on to reflect on the negative consequences this would have for our nation. The article is worth a read (http://mg.co.za/article/2014-02-14-matric-critics-must-face-reality#comment_thread).


His findings also helps to protect the value of our girls' achievement. Well done girls and well done to those who have supported them along the way. We have also overcome countless challenges. In particular I want to recognise the selfless, weekly efforts of Coral Wills and Caroline Goodier who committed themselves to seeing these girls succeed. 



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Friday, October 19, 2012

You don't want to be a school administrator!

6:55 AM | Posted by Gabrielle Wills | | Edit Post
Micah6 keeps on moving forward and my eyes are continually opened to the reality of school life in South Africa.

Today I was at two different schools for admin reasons. The first Sparks Estate Secondary - a mainstream high school. The second Westridge School - a special needs school. As I sat in the corridors of these two institutions I was amazed at the constant stream of difficulties and challenges that reach the registration office doors every five minutes. At Sparks, the teachers were phoning the police because rogue, delinquent boys were jumping over the fence, seriously disrupting classes and probably adding to the drug dealing woes the school currently faces. If I was a female teacher there I would be frightened as the young men stare at them incredulously and lie straight to the face while wondering things you don't want to know (P.S. I say young men, not boys, because I don't consider a 20 year old who is still in matric your average child). This school needs a seriously BIG Zulu impi to stare these reprobates in face and tell them the truth they need to hear. The police on various occasions have arrested trouble causing, drug dealing students but a day later they are back at school and it is VERY difficult to get rid of them. Honestly, the discipline and social issues facing schools are beyond bizarre.

I then moved on to Westridge where I watched the administration guy at reception being consistently harassed for form after form, by phonecall after phonecall and by one impaired learner after another. If I was him I would have quit long ago! By the time I left, a child was on the brink of a epileptic fit (for real) and the reception lady looked like she was about to suffer a major heart attack from stress (I am sure the wrinkles on her face and crusty looking skin were not just the result of age) while yelling at some wandering boys to "GET BACK TO CLASS, DON'T BE STUPID, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE!!" . Bright red blood vessels.

And while all of this was happening the learner at the front desk was suffering from short term memory loss (for real) and all I could do was shake my head in dismay gratefully thanking the Lord that I am not a school administrator!



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Tuesday, August 21, 2012

The library project moves forward

2:37 AM | Posted by Gabrielle Wills | | Edit Post
In the past few months, I have had quite a bit of fun with the Sheryl Pillay and Sharm Natalie in putting together a usable library at Sparks Estate Secondary School. A Grace mission day to the school in February along with a generous donation from St. Thomas Anglican Church helped spur on this little project. We started with i) scheduling a compulsory library period each week for grade 8 learners and then ii) getting the resources we needed. The kids unfortunately were sitting on tables and on the floor for the first two months of the year but it was necessary to secure users of the library before resources were spent.

As the months have progressed new books have been bought, tables, chairs and fans installed. We have even had an internet connection installed in the library with three laptops for learners to access non-fiction resources. The grade 8's have finally been able to take out books in the past 3 months as we purchased a library management software system to control the movement of books in and out of the library. Two things have emerged from this:
i) For the first time some learners are taking out a book from a library, actually reading it and coming back to class to tell others what they have read.
ii) There are illiterate grade 8's at the school who have had to secretly reveal to our volunteer librarian that they actually cannot read at all and need some help.

The library experience is therefore a dichotomous one: expanding the world of those who have the tools to read while increasing the frustrations of those who stare blankly at the reality of many books they cannot personally access.

There is one particular positive and unexpected outcome of the library project. In the course of trying to expand the current library facility, a generous move was made by the neighbouring bursar. A hole was bashed through the library dry wall into her office to extend the library by 2 metres. Our finances for this little extension were limited and the quotations we received from professional builders did not match our limitations! In response, Sham Natalie - an admin support staff at Sparks - exclaimed that he had the skills to undertake the renovation at half the price. I put him up to the challenge on the condition he submits a quotation as a sole-proprietor. Well what followed is the creation of a new start-up renovations business "ShamRok Trading"!


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Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Primary education in our local community: Exasperating!

2:01 AM | Posted by Gabrielle Wills | | Edit Post


Recently Micah6 has tried to pursue a course of action to intervene in the life of a little young girl from Cato Crest Primary School (and younger sister of one of our currently sponsored learners). Our action plan is to get her into a better school for the following reason: Four years since our first cohort of sponsored learners  entered high school, it is clear that they have been unfairly served at the foundation phase level. For these children who all schooled at Cato Crest Primary, basic groundwork never took place and their high school progression rests on very shaky foundations. As a result we have involved ourselves in the business of patch work. Maximising a child’s potential must happen at the primary school level.

Our new little candidate is entering grade 4 next year and we thought we take some action to get her accepted into a great little state school around the corner. With an initial inquest into the school's application process, we have already been turned down for two reasons i) the school is inundated with admission requests at the grade 4 level (understandably) and ii) she will not be able to cope: She has come from Cato Crest Primary where Zulu is the ‘de facto’ medium of instruction and mathematics foundations are just inadequately prepared. An absurd suggestion was then given by the admission secretary that she complete her primary education at Cato Crest Primary – the very place where she will continue to receive ‘blunt’ instruction. She will become part of yet another cohort of children we have engaged with from Cato Crest Primary whose life opportunities by the age of 13 have already been seriously comprised. In reaction we have even suggested that she be admitted at the grade 3 level but repeat a grade to address conceptual gaps. This is apparently impossible under DOE rules.

At present we are left with one remaining possibility: provide this little girl with access to extra lessons most afternoons of her school week to fill in the gaps of an inadequate education received during the day. Once we have paid for extra lessons and transport costs, this option will be considerably more expensive than R14,000 in fees for the year at the good school around the corner and just seems a ridiculous notion. The obvious long-term solution is to fix Cato Crest Primary – not impossible but very difficult and a long process! 

At this point what is clear is that despite concerted efforts and available funding, it is just very difficult to help even one life in the presence of a dysfunctional education system. The Cato Crest Primary Schools of this country are silent predators eating away at the potential of thousands of young South African lives.


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Sunday, March 4, 2012

SA and Aus unite to make a difference

10:50 PM | Posted by Gabrielle Wills | | Edit Post
Last Saturday, Micah6 was connected to a small group of music lovers in Sydney Australia. While having a good ole' blast (literally as a couple of saxophones blew into the night) in Aus, another a group of South Africans were painting classrooms at Sparks Estate Secondary School as part of a Micah6 school clean-up day. As a result of these two efforts...
  • Sparks Estate has 12 fresh painted classrooms and a school library and
  • The future of another vulnerable girl is secured by a generous "party" donation from Australia.
Thank you to those Sydney residents who attended the Mowday summer night concert and donated to Micah6. At this present moment, one of our girls in the our Micah6 programme is really struggling to keep pace in a main stream public school. She has a learning disability and unless we intervene she will literally be 'stuck' in the South African schooling system without any remedial support. For a young girl like this, who is orphaned and lives in extremely vulnerable circumstances with her unemployed grandmother (and a multitude of other siblings and cousins), there is little hope for a reasonable life trajectory. In a class of over 40 children, where there is no time for one-on-one support (let alone hope of seeing an occupational therapist), she will continually be reminded of how she is a 'failure'. Each year that she is unable to progress to the next grade, no teacher will address the cause of her problem or explain to her why she is 'different'. Her confidence is increasingly lowered in the process and any sense of purpose or ability to rise above her circumstances is snuffed out.

Recently we took this young girl to be assessed at a school that caters for children with her needs. She is currently on the waiting list to enter this school and while she is waiting we have been in a quandary trying to figure out how to get funding towards her fees of R6,000 a year. Your generous night of reveling has made her forthcoming placement at the school possible. Many thanks!


To Grace Family Church thank you for engaging with school reality in South Africa. In particular, thank you for giving up a beautiful Saturday morning, and without complaining, scrapping bubble gum off classroom walls before they could be painted! This was truly a labour of love. A special thanks to Dave Richter for organising the details of the day and important logistics as well as Bev Andrews for taking the responsibility of ensuring the curtains for the library were made.

The 25 February will certainly go down as the first day Micah6 has engaged so much support, from so many people (across continents) at one moment in time. The Lord has been faithful.
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