By-Youth,For-Youth Education in

South African Townships

Quest conference York District, Ontario, Canada

18 November 2010

Funeka KalawePhillip Mcelu

Joy Olivier

South Africa's Education Crisis

- SA is among the worst- performing education systems in the world

- Only 17.4% of the Western Cape's grade 6 students have grade-level numeracy skills and

48.6% have grade-level literacy skills

11/17/10

Why We Exist:

Inequality in the education system

11/17/10

Challenging home environments provide little or no academic

support

Average monthly household

income: 144 CAD30% of the population is HIV positive

40% unemployed

11/17/10

Without the skills, knowledge and practices required, learners are unable to access tertiary education. Without educated young black citizens, South Africa cannot escape the inequalities

engineered by apartheid.

It is only through equal access to quality education that the promise of a transformed SA can truly be

realised

Positive change with very little resources and a lot of

passion

We’re currently based in:

Western Cape

Gauteng

Kwa Zulu Natal

Who we are and what we do

By-youth, for-youth Established in 2003 Enable disadvantaged youth to pull themselves out of poverty and into university

Peer-to-peer support for learners taking their futures

into their own hands

Over 50% of learners stay on as volunteers

Who we are and what we do

Opt-in model + incentivised attendance = committed learners and impressive results

Where to from here?

Consolidation: IkamvaYouth-in-a-Box

Sustainable funding

Roll-out

Target: To enable 855 learners to access tertiary by 2015 (half of the number in the entire Western Cape province in 2008)

Questions?

Please keep in touch!

www.ikamvayouth.org THANK YOU!