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In 2003 the local Cape of Good Hope Rotary Club, agreed to become VDP’s development partner and sponsored a beautiful brick and mortar building with six classrooms. This enabled the centre to accommodate 110 children aged 3 to 6 years. With the help of local business people, notably Herbie Eichel of Fish Hoek Galley Restaurant, the school became a well-resourced centre and model to other educare facilities in the community. Herbie donated R25 000.00 for education equipment.
The teaching medium at Masakhane had always been Xhosa as this is the mother tongue of the local residents. This however, meant that children who attended other primary schools in the area where the teaching medium was English, struggled to communicate. In order to facilitate the integration of children from Masiphumelele into the education system of the Valley, it was decided to introduce English as an additional language.
An appeal in the local media resulted in a number of enthusiastic volunteers who gave their time to read and interact with the children and augment the work done by the teachers. School leavers, working as gap year volunteers also assisted wherever possible and learned first hand what it is like to teach young children. Hopefully they will be inspired to become educare teachers themselves. Herbie also sponsored the salary of an English teacher for a number of years.
The issue of numeracy at Masakhane was addressed when Herbie agreed to pay for the services of Grenville Le Grange, a passionate, caring and inspirational teacher who managed to introduce maths to the educators by making it simple and unintimidating.
By establishing the Empowerment Through Education Trust we are able to provide educational bursaries to a small number of children from Masakhane and Green Curtains from Grade 1 to Grade 12.
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