Bongani Majola
Vodacom has chosen unlikely beneficiaries for its corporate social investment programme prisoners.
Together with the Readucate Trust, a Section 18a educational and literacy non-profit organisation, the Vodacom Foundation has ploughed R250 000 into a basic literacy training programme that is envisaged to benefit at least 600 young prisoners in Gauteng.
The donation by the Vodacom Foundation has so far covered the training of 60 literate inmates, who would then be enabled to teach the basics to other offenders.
The successful Readucate instructors, as the qualified offenders are known, then teach fellow offenders “a multidimensional approach to reading that is in line with outcomes based education.”
Once released from prison, Readucate instructors are licensed to start their own Readucate centres.
Golden Chauke and Albert Chapfunga are graduates of the programme.
When he went to prison in 1992, Chauke only had standard seven. But now he has a matric, a business certificate and ambitions of a brighter future.
Asked what he went to prison for, Chauke says he does not want to talk about the past. Instead, he says, he operates a micro-enterprise, Agifanang Entrepreneurial Development Forum, in Hammanskraal, north of Pretoria, which renders such services as life skills, tender advice, training and capacity-building, information networks and community development to the community.
“Readucate is the foundation from which all other ventures were advanced,” says Chauke.
Chapfunga says the programme has strong rehabilitative aspects and it is these that he wants to exploit as he embarks on his mission to have ex-prisoners help those who have just been released to be reintegrated into society.
The programme has another unlikely product in a Readucator serving a 30-year sentence, who has obtained a BA in education.
On the wisdom of helping prisoners, executive head of the Vodacom Foundation Mthobi Tyamzashe says: “Literate [former] inmates are less likely to commit crime again. In fact, 80% of crime is repeat offences, hence we see our programme as essentially a preventative measure.”
“More than 40% of our country’s population is being denied access to both basic and vital services because of the pervading oppression of illiteracy,” adds Edna Freinkel, founder and trustee of Readucate. Most of the population, she says, has to make up 40 years of educational backlog in “40 minutes”.
“Readucate’s unique intensive initial eight-10 approach that then leads to distance education enables educators and others to implement Readucate immediately. Thus learners don’t have to wait to learn our multidimensional approach to reading while their instructors keep improving through distance education.”
Readucate has two-hour slots twice a week in 11 Gauteng prisons. Fifty-five prisoners and/or educators are active throughout Johannes-burg, Devon, Nigel, Boksburg, Heidelberg, Modderbee, Leeuwkop, Pretoria Central, Baviaansport, Emthonjeni Juvenile and Zonderwater prisons.
Freinkel is full of praise for “the support and encouragement from the national and provincial departments of Correctional Services, heads of prisons, educationists as well as Vodacom”.
She says that, at 69, she is “constantly inspired by their sincere desire and positive actions to uplift the nation”.
Freinkel says of Chauke and Chapfunga: “We have two men who are living exemplary lives since being released as a result of their exposure to Readucate while still in prison. Research has further shown that if inmates leave prison fully literate, recidivism rates drop.”