New Shoes and Hands of Hope

Last Friday we had a school excursion to the local mall. Myself, two other teachers and 17 students piled into a small bus to make the trip to a shoe store. The students were getting new shoes! Before I go further with that story, let me first tell you a little bit more about the school.

Hands of Hope School was started at Refilwe in 2008, in response to the lack of quality secondary education in the area. The leadership at Refilwe found that the children they sent to the local high schools were not receiving an education that was going to be of any use to them in the real world, so decided to take the standards into their own hands. 

There is great disparity here in terms of educational standards. An education act that was passed in the 1950s separated white and black education, with huge differences in the amounts of funding allotted. While the end of Apartheid 'stopped' this from occurring for the past 15 years, the after effects of it today means that there are some very rich, well funded schools with very high standards, as well as many underfunded schools in poor areas. The schools in our area may have up to 40 students in one classroom, with untrained teachers teaching them. The official language of education here is English, Year 12 students must take all of their exams in English to pass; yet many of the teachers' English is not sufficient enough to teach it to their students.

It was in that context that Refilwe began Hands of Hope. Currently there are 17 students that attend. Most of them are children from the God Parents' program and live here at Refilwe (which means lucky for them they can leave home at 7.59 and get to school with 30 seconds to spare!). A few others live in the settlements nearby and walk here. The students are aged between 13 and 17, however are organised into Years 7-9, based on their abilities. Many of the students do quite well, but many still struggle to understand complicated concepts explained to them in English.

Part of my role at the school is to work individually with several students who need extra support in terms of English comprehension. I am also teaching two subjects (Economic & Management Sciences and Life Orientation) and have begun doing some group work with a group of 6 students. 

Hands of Hope has virtually no funding at all, very little resources and only two full time teachers, who are certainly not here for the money! The school is currently quite reliant on donations- something they hope to rectify through some creative fundraising sometime in the near future. 

Last Friday, as I said, we had a school excursion to the local mall. Funds had very generously been provided for each student to receive a pair of black school shoes, as well as a new pair of 

runners. The kids had fun trying on shoes, and we had fun trying to control them all in one small store! We then had a photo shoot yesterday of all the kids in their new shoes. The photos will be sent as part of a Thankyou to those who donated the shoes. We had fun putting them in poses to show off their shoes. I picked a few of my favourites to share with you. I find some of their facial expressions hilarious!