Awareness campaign on substance abuse 2019

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The school’s LSA (Learner Support Agent) Vuyiseka Siwisa and the new TADA (Teenagers Against Drug Abuse) coordinator Ntsako Ndlovu held an awareness campaign on Substance abuse to highlight the devastating effect that substance abuse has on our learners. TADA aims at changing the behavior of teenagers who have come into conflict with the law. This program focuses on attitude change and taking responsibility and more importantly divert them from the system.

Introducing our newest member, this is the one and only Miss Ntsako, who has been helping us in the past few years. She is now the new TADA coordinator and is working at the school under Social Development. Ntsako started working with us at the beginning of October and the learners will be seeing more of her around the school as she will be working closely with the learners and on programs that deal directly with drugs.

Welcome Ntsako, we wish you well.

Sifunda Kunye Community Reading club – Santa Clause visit and Facilitators end year function.

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9 November 2019

It was a very exciting day for all our little readers as Santa Clause made a special visit for all our hard working young little readers.

The Sifunda Kunye community reading club assists young readers on Saturdays to improve their reading skills and to create a safe, friendly, fun learning environment.

The club focuses to introduce reading in a fun way, through song, dance, group and individual reading sessions.

The club is run by Sifunda Kunye Lab Facilitator Yonela Swayi and assisted by Sifunda Kunye facilitators (Volunteers) from grade 11. The facilitators program for grade 11 is a great way and opportunity for our future leaders to give back and pay it forward.

2019 was over all a very successful year with an average of 100 little readers  attending our Saturday Reading clubs.

On the 9th of November 2019 after our end year Santa Clause visit our well deserving facilitators enjoyed a BBQ at Bushmans Sand hotel.

Our school is grateful to Sifunda Kunye Educational project for running and sponsoring this club.

 

Santa Clause Visit 2019

                                           

 

Hendrik Kanise Sifunda Kunye Reading club facilitators 2019

 

 

 

 

Facilitators End Year Function at Bushmans Sands Hotel.

Sifunda Kunye Community Reading club and Facilitators program term 2

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For the club, we have had a wonderful term. The kids have been coming in numbers and our facilitators have been enjoying each and every session with the kids. The club started a year ago and throughout the whole journey the facilitators have managed to acquire skills on how to work with the kids and be able to control the over excitement the kids always have.

The whole experience of working with the kids have caused our old facilitators to want to continue working with the kids even though their time span has been finished. The facilitators are supposed to work for a year then we can recruit new facilitators the following year. In total we have 10 facilitators (5 olds and 5 new) and 90 kids who attend our reading club.

The kids enjoy a fun day dancing along to action songs and doing group reading or enjoying a lovely story read by one of the facilitators. Sometimes they also tell their own stories or do drawings. The drawings interpret what each individual has learned that specific day or what they have enjoyed most about that day.

The club has also engaged in a clean-up program where they had to find the dirtiest place in the community and try to fill up 200 bean bags with trash. The program was organized by the Shamwari group and in return the kids received a donation of books for the club.

 

 

Girls Club

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GIRLS CLUB

The girls club is facilitated by the most creative teacher – Miss Williams who is qualified to be an Arts and craft teacher. With her being the engine of the club, the kids in the club always creates beautiful pieces of art and with so many fun things to do it is always enjoyable to be at their sessions. This term was very short and busy but with every free time the club had they used it to their advantage. They have been working closely with the Shamwari group who thought it would be exciting to donate old bed sheets to the club and recycle them into something handy.

If the kids are not recycling old materials and old clothes, they create lovely arts pieces and have created very beautiful pictures using foil and paint and have also did string painting. This is very interesting and lovely to watch and in these kinds of activities the kids are getting arts skills and are also learning new things about themselves. It is one thing to learn and create new pieces but the award in all this is the confidence of realizing how capable they are.

Recently the club was visited by a group of photographers from Shamwari who did a traditional photo shoot with the kids. The pictures haven’t been back yet but it was a really good photo shoot and the kids enjoyed it.

Things are really looking virtuous for the club.

ECO Club

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ECO CLUB

 

As an Eco school we also have an Eco club that is a platform on which we get the knowledge about environment. The meaning of an eco-club in a group who works to contribute to improve environmental conditions. They offer programs and activities to encourage other learners to reduce pollution, plant trees and more.

The eco-club play an important role in creating environmental awareness amongst the future generation.

The club has been working very closely with the Shamwari group in their gardening project where they planted vegetables and they have also had a clean-up program at the school.

The eco-club members also visited Shamwari game reserve to celebrate leopard day, the kids prepared a presentation about leopards and presented it at the reserve.

The Shamwari group also held fun indigenous games for the eco-club where they enjoyed different games with some of the volunteering students from the Shamwari conservation experience.

Candle Light Ceremony

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EDUCATIONAL EVENTS

CANDLE LIGHT CEREMONY

On the 15th of May the school had a candle light ceremony. This event has turned to one of the school’s annual events as it is one the world’s oldest and largest grassroots mobilizationcampaigns for HIV awareness. The International Candlelight Memorial takes place every 19th of May. This event reminds us those that are affected by the HIV epidemic, including people living with HIV in all their diversity: being women, men and young people.  In the event we were joined by the local social worker Phumla Gojela who explained the purpose of us joining together for this event to the learners.

The event is always education and yet emotional as most of us have lost people very close to our hearts because of HIV/AIDS.

“Reflect on our past preparing for future.”

Drug awareness

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Use and abuse of drugs and alcohol by teens is very common and can have serious consequences. In the 15-24 year age range 50% deaths involve alcohol and drug abuse.

The school has a policy of non-drug and alcohol use and we always hold motivational sessions for the learners so that they can be aware of the dangers of alcohol and drug use. The schools also invites the SAPS for random pursuits of drugs.

The combination of teenagers’ curiosity, risk taking behaviour and social pressure makes it very difficult to say no. This leads most teenagers to the questions: “Would it hurt to try?” That is why it is essential for us as teachers to have these effective drug and alcohol education for the kids because it plays a counterbalancing role in shaping a normative culture of safety, moderation and informed decision making.

The learner are also playing big roles in in making sure these issues are addressed as they are running a peer education programme. In the programme they discuss some of the issues they are facing as teenagers and they have concluded that Alcohol and Drug abuse is among the worse challenges that they have ever faced. Of cause all of that is because of low self-esteem and peer pressure.

 

Music and Drama

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The music club has been around since last year and the club has been running smoothly. This year we have introduced Drama club to the school, nothing much has happened yet but the club has managed to hold a couple number of sessions. On the 06 of February the Drama, Dance and Girls club were visited by Volunteers from the Shamwari Conservation Experience. The volunteers helped our learners by setting up drama exercises including ‘catching me am falling’ game that teaches learners about trusting one another. The day was fun and the learners sang and performed their dance routines for their visitors.

 

RCL 2019

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RCL INDUCTION

 

On the 29th of January 2019 the school held an induction for the new RCL members, the induction was led by Mrs Louw-Arnolds and the learners were motivated by Mrs Nesi about how RCL member should conduct themselves. Parents were also invited to witness this wonderful event of our future leaders. We wish you well on your journey.

 

Albany Museum

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On the 8th of February 2019 the school was visited by Khayakazi Mhasele and Chad Keates a herpetologist from the Albany Museum in Grahamstown. They conducted a presentation that focused on what makes snakes different from turtles, alligators and lizards though they are all reptiles and

how thy use their muscles to move. The presentation was for Grade 7 to 12.

We would like to t\say thank Mr keates and miss Mhasele for an awesome visit.

 

We are hoping to have more sessions like this next term.