Ikamvayouth

IkamvaYouth supports disadvantaged secondary school students in township communities with supplementary academic tutoring, career guidance mentoring and e-learning. All programme delivery is provided by volunteers, most of whom are university students who were previously learners in the programme. With 60% of learners becoming volunteers, beneficiaries turn into benefactors, and provide peer-learning, networks and resources to enable the next generation of learners to access tertiary education or employment opportunities. There are no academic requirements or fees for entry, but in order to keep their place in the programme, learners need to meet a minimum 75% attendance. There are 3.4 million learners from the bottom four levels of the Living Standard Measure in South Africa. These learners live in townships and rural areas, and attend schools which, for the most part, provide little support on the road towards academic achievement. Roughly 75% of SA schools are dysfunctional (Spaull, 2012). Participants in the IkamvaYouth program self select and enroll during eighth, ninth or tenth grade at one of the organisation?s 10 branches around the country. South Africa?s education system is in crisis, and youth unemployment is rising. Despite large sums of funds spent in attempts to address these problems, very little has worked; in literacy and numeracy benchmarks, the country is consistently ranked lower than others on the continent with far fewer resources, and youth unemployment is increasing annually. Yet IkamvaYouth has developed a highly effective, low-cost model which enables learners from the poorest-performing township schools to achieve academic results that mirror those of the best-resourced schools in the country. While 35% of South Africans between 18 and 25 are not in education or employment (NEETs), 90% of ikamvanites graduate from high school, 70% access tertiary education, and a further 10% access internships or jobs. Once they reach college, they?re far less likely to drop out than the average South African student, and four times more likely to graduate. And when they?re working, these young professionals earn a median income of $900 per month; closer to the earnings of white South Africans ($1000 per month) and a far cry from that of black South Africans ($230 per month). IkamvaYouth?s results have been replicated in ten different townships across five provinces, and the model is being adopted by other organisations. The organisation is about to embark on a Government sponsored pilot, aimed at large scale implementation in schools. At the low cost of under around $400 per learner per year, the model provides a scaleable solution to the country?s biggest problems.

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