“From Australia with love”, could be the message from Philippa Wheaton, executive director of enke: Make your mark.
The initiative was formed after Wheaton and her friends Kathryn Maunders and Thomas Walsh visited South Africa to promote “cross-cultural” interaction between the two countries.
During their visit they worked closely with schools around Umlazi and the Valley of 1 000 Hills in KwaZulu-Natal and they noticed most schools were poorly resourced. It also dawned on them that the idea of promoting cultural exchanges between South Africa and Australia was not going to have direct and tangible impact on ordinary people. So, at end of their visit, they decided to launch the project with a view to helping young South Africans to connect across racial, cultural, religious and linguistic divides.
“We want to teach the youth that they should not wait for someone to make things happen for them. That they, too, are capable of making a meaningful contribution in society,” said Wheaton. The project targets grade 11 learners and works closely with schools across the country.
Wheaton, who holds an honours degree in philosophy from the University of Sydney, almost got a job as a UN representative on climate change in Bangladesh. But she shelved the idea because: “South Africa stole my heart!” Maunders and Walsh have since left but still maintain strong links with enke.
Wheaton explained that enke focuses mainly on creating a platform for learners to interact between themselves beyond their socioeconomic backgrounds; it equips them with necessary skills to access opportunities and inspires them to act and take the initiative.
Every year enke convenes forums in which learners from across the country meet for a week to be taught a variety of skills such as self-management or development, how to develop and manage projects as well as emotional intelligence. More importantly, Wheaton said, we ensure that the “community actions programmes” (CAPS) that learners come up with relate to the problems or challenges faced by their communities and that they are implementable. “We also help to link what they do with global and local initiatives such as Millennium Development Goals.”
The forums are growing from strength to strength every year. The first attracted 94 learners and that held last July drew 114 participants. Gauteng so far has been the host and the administrative hub of the project but the intention in future is to decentralise it to other provinces, said Wheaton.
On why the group targets grade 11 learners, Wheaton said this was because “in our view, grade 10s are still young and a bit immature” to be able to implement their projects effectively when they get home. “The content of what we teach them is aligned to the life skills syllabus and the experience gained during the forums helps prepare them for the rigours of the grade 12 class. This, in turn, prepares them for post-schooling,” she added.
Wheaton said enke takes pride in the fact that some of the programmes their graduates have launched not only have a significant and positive effect on their communities, but are also sustainable. Two former learners of Dendron Senior Secondary School in Limpopo, Morukhuladi Maja and Tsakane Ngoepe, who took part in the 2009 forum, launched a project aimed at improving their school’s pass rate from between 70% and 80% to 100% by identifying learners who excelled in some subjects to coach those who were battling.
Another graduate, Meghan Daniels from Wynberg Girls’ High in the Western Cape, came up with her own project to teach photography to underprivileged schools so that learners can use it as “a means of creative self-expression”. Nikon and Fuji Film sponsor her project. Another innovative project was by Paige Jenje of St Stithian’s Girls’ School, who launched an environmental awareness project at schools in and around Alexandra township, north of Johannesburg, to mobilise learners to tackle the enormous amount of litter in their neighbourhood.
Wheaton said enke is working closely with the corporate social investment divisions of high profile corporates such as Old Mutual, Investec, Engen, The Nedbank Foundation and AusAID, because, “they see our programme as complementing their existing work on education”.