Edoovillage #1656 - South Africa, Mphahlele village: Sefalaolo Primary school | Ajimba African Tours

Sefalaolo Primary school is a public school in a underdeveloped, rural area of the South African province Limpopo.
The laptops will be used to do computer classes with students in grade 6 and 7 in order to better prepare the for the highly competitive job market in South Africa.

Sefalaolo Primary school is a public primary school in the Lepelle-Nkupi circuit. It is located in the former Sepedi Homeland Lebowa. As you maybe know south Africa was, till 1994 ruled by the non-Democratic Apartheid regime, which under the homeland act, crated homelands for each of the South African ''Tribes''. These areas had very little financial support, which is still visible today. In total 544 learners are beeing educated in this school by 16 Teachers. In South Africa primary schools go from grade R, which is quite similar to a preschool, till grade seven, after which most attend secondary school. As you can see the Learner-Teacher ratio isn't the best, so most classes have between 55 to 75 learners per teacher, which obviously makes it about impossible to support each of them individually. I would plan to offer these computer lessons to grade seven, as they tend to be a little more disciplined, have reasonable English skills, and learn fast. I know that it isn't realistic to get a donation of 75 laptops to do classes with all of them at a time, but that would be unrealistic anyway, as this would result in a giant chaos. The best way, in my opinion, would be to separate the class into groups of 15 to 20 learners, and then always take one group to do computer classes. By this, the teaches and I also have the possibility to support each of them individually. In these computer classes, I intend to teach them how to use basic office tools, such as word and PowerPoint, search things on the internet( how to do research, get to know the trustworthiness of sources) and generally just use it as a new form of teaching. Talking about doing research: I talked to the principal about funds for getting a Wifi connection, he said that the school would be able to provide some funds and I will also make a request with the Internet providers for some discounted rates for charity. The major goal for these computer classes would be to equip the learners with better chances to get a higher qualification. South Africa is the world's most unjust country when it comes to wealth and income, and therefore also has one of the lowest social mobility in the world. When a child from this village is going to a normal public school, such as Sefalaolo Primary, it's future is mostly already made up. It will most likely spend the rest of its life in the village just as its parents and grandparents did, and maybe have a small, badly paid job to pay for food. To break out of this circle is incredibly hard, and with an educational system that doesn't really teach them what they need to get a qualified job in a globalized economy, such as IT skills, qualified jobs are mostly reserved to the wealthy who can afford to send their children to private schools. The goal of these computer classes would be to give them a better chance to break out of that circle and prepare them for the current job market. When it comes to to training the teachers I don't really see a problem there. I will be leaving South Africa in the beginning of July, but already one moth later there will be two other volunteers from Germany coming who will most likely have the know how for doing computer classes and working with them. And even if that should not be the case, there are two teachers in the office who know quiete well how to work with computers, as they are from Johannesburg where they offer computer classes. I would then use the rest of my time here to teach them what I know. The maintenance is personally my biggest concern, as the soil here is very dusty, red and goes everywhere where you don't want it to go and this might be harmful to the ventilation of the Laptops. To prevent this I think cleaning the filters on a regular basis, and store the Laptops in plastic bags when not used in order to keep the dust away would be helpful. Should there be technical problems with one of the laptops and non of us should be able to fix that, there is a township called Lebowakgomo about 20 minutes driving form here, where there are people who can fix Computers for little money.