Masupatsela

LEAP
DIRECTED and EDITED by TINA-LOUISE SMITH
TX 19th July 2010

LEAP originally stood for Langa Education Assistance Programme, a volunteer driven project started by John Gilmour in the 1990s under apartheid to provide extra tuition to black learners from Langa. Today LEAP is used metaphorically to suggest the growth the learners experience. LEAP Science and Maths School, an official high school, is located in Pinelands in the Western Cape and in Alexandra in Gauteng.

LEAP was formally established in 2003 and enrolled its first learners in 2004. LEAP accepts learners for grades 10 through to 12 and the school focuses on Maths and Science tuition, allotting double time each day to Maths, Science and English. The school aims to address the dire state of education in South Africa that includes South African learners lagging far behind the African average for performance in Maths and Science, and the fact that most of South Africa’s learners are being taught by teachers who were educated and trained under apartheid’s prejudiced Bantu Education.

The school’s approach is based on relationships, where staff and learners are encouraged to form strong, lasting relationships with each other, and they are encouraged to be open about what they feel. Life Orientation classes especially, where a group of learners attend lessons facilitated by two teachers in a supportive atmosphere, are aimed at encouraging learners to express themselves and to engage with the world they live in. The philosophy behind this approach is that allowing learners to express problems that they may be living with enables them to be less bogged down by the problem and frees their minds so that may be better able to think and learn.

TO CONTACT OR CONTRIBUTE TO LEAP:
contact them on +27 21 531 9715 or visit their web site.

IF YOU HAVE THE COURAGE TO START A SIMILAR SCHOOL, YOU CAN FOLLOW JOHN GILMOUR’S LEAD:
- draw on your experience from all your years of teaching
- work hard at trying to interest funders in your idea
- be prepared to work without being paid for as long as it takes
- simply follow your heart if you know what you’re doing is right
- find the right funders and partners for your project
- expand your project to make sure more benefit from it!

HEIFER
DIRECTED by AYANDA MNCWABE
EDITED by ENOCK VALOYI
TX 19th July 2010

Heifer is an international organisation with a simple approach to community development that may be summed up with the phrase, ‘the gift that keeps on giving’.

Heifer works with impoverished communities to ensure that the community members develop to be able to feed themselves and their families. They do this through insisting that each recipient of a gift becomes a donor. Community members get together and select a family to receive the first gift of a heifer from Heifer. That family then raises the cow, using the milk to feed the family and in some cases communities have started dairies. Once the cow has given birth to a female calf that calf is presented as a gift to another family in the community. Male calves are not given as gifts, only female calves because female calves are able to produce more heifers, which in turn can be passed on to other families.

TO CONTACT OR CONTRIBUTE TO HEIFER:
contact them in KwaZulu-Natal on +27 31 777 1374, in Limpopo on +27 15 295 8827, or in the Eastern Cape on +27 43 642 2963, or visit their web site.

TO BE PART OF THIS TRAILBLAZING PROJECT AND BECOME A GIFT GIVER, YOU WILL NEED TO:
- join with other community members to discuss your community’s livelihood needs
- organise into a community group that will work towards breeding livestock for the benefit of your community
- apply to Heifer South Africa for funding and training for your project
- be patient as funding may not always be readily available
- once training and animals are received be patient as your animals grow to give birth to their own offspring
- pass on the first female offspring to your neighbour
- continue to nurture your livestock and reproduce for your own family forever!

SCREEN GRABS FROM THE LEAP AND HEIFER STORIES: