Trio aim to uplift rural girls
Project focuses on breaking cycle of poverty
THREE East London women have embarked on a campaign to empower rural schoolgirls.
The trio have adopted Grade 9s from two schools – Mzuvukile High School in Mooiplaas and St Cuthbert High in Tsolo – as a start.
The programme is being championed by Qondeka Zantsi, Yandiswa Sodaba and Kolisa Siqoko, all directors of the Agency for First Graduate Foundation.
The project will see the young women attend annual summer camps aimed at improving their school work and their personal development.
The pupils will be the first to take part in the pilot project, which will run for the next three years.
The intervention comes as a response to the plight of rural girls who live in poverty, largely dependent on government grants and who have no immediate role models. Talking to the Saturday Dispatch yesterday, Siqoko said their goal was to help the pupils qualify for university.
“We have noticed that rural girls most of the time do not make the cut and criteria as compared to their urban, former model C and private school counterparts,” said Siqoko.
“So we saw the need for us to assist because some interventions only focus on Grade 12, and we believe that it’s too late to intervene just for the last year of school.”
She said the project also aimed to create a pool for scholarships.
The three-year-long pilot project will be made up of intense annual summer camps, which will not only help hone the pupils’ English and mathematics skills but also focus on their personal development.
Siqoko said the annual summer camps would include extra lessons in leadership and social entrepreneurship.
The selection criteria would focus on first generation pupils, where none of their siblings or parents were university or tertiary graduates.
This is being done in order to try and break the cycle of poverty for the families of participating girls.
The programme was officially launched at an event in Baysville, East London, where Deputy Minister of Communications Stella NdabeniAbrahams delivered the keynote speech on the importance of empowering girl children through education. — siphem@dispatch.co.za