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A nation’s greatest asset is its youth; South Africa has a large population of young people who are from underprivileged, under resourced communities. Most of these young people do not make it to higher educational institutions mainly come from disadvantage communities like rural and township areas. It is said that “historically black" and previously disadvantages schools make up 80% of the country's 7000 secondary schools. Despite this large number, these schools produce only 20% of students who qualify for university.
Sakha Ulutsha Lwethu seeks to tackle some of the issues that make this a reality. These issues are: lack of information or understanding of the opportunities available; funding for their studies; career guidance and challenging of inferiority complexes that limits their ambition to achieve academic excellence.
We try to tackle these issues by running workshops in rural and township schools. Provide bursary and financial aid forms; university and FET College forms to assist them in their applications. We also teach and encourage academic excellence and the value of education, stress how education can take people out of poverty as well as inspire them set goals.
The project was started last year and its beneficiaries where over a thousand rural and township grade 12 learners from the Lukhanji Municipality in Eastern Cape. This year with a partnership between other three One Young World ambassadors the project seeks to do workshops in 50 rural and township schools in three South African provinces. We have expanded the project to include grade 9, 11 and 12 learners. An aim for this project is to ignite a passion for education, excellence and personal achievement within rural and township students. Increase their matric pass rate so that more learners able to get into institutions of higher learning. We want young people from rural, townships and marginalized communities driven to be more than what circumstance allows them to be.