Project overview

BBMEducation Project works within a context of both External and internal factors, issues not limited only to education but also trends that impact and have an influence on the organisation and the learners we working with. The project is carried out in Alexandra Township situated in the province of Gauteng, South Africa, which has been hard hit by HIV/AIDS and more drop outs in schools.

Alexandra is the oldest former black settlement in Johannesburg and remains one of the most socially and economically depressed areas within South Africa. It has a population of a +/-600 000 people living in squalor on two square miles of land. The township is impoverished and overcrowded with a high unemployment rate, transactional sex is rife and multiple sexual partners tend to be the norm, peer pressure, teenage pregnancy and lot of drop outs and no support for learners in school. There are fast growing numbers of child-headed households thus impacts directly on their education as they have to look after their siblings. The townships generally have no access to psychosocial support services of any kind and in the face of limited access to educational programmes are rife with misguided notions about education. Networking amongst service providers tends to be informal and haphazard. There is no formal identification of who is providing what, no system that identifies natural support structures that occur, and thus services rendered fall short in terms of efficiency and holistic intervention.

BBMEducation Project , Identifies, recruit and support leaners in Grade 10 to 12 across high schools within the radius of the greater Alexandra community , thereby positively impacting thier studies , grades at school and creating a space where learning is individually and group focused.

Our existing 20 Student - tutors are well placed within the project to help the students with their homework's, assignments and provide teaching classes to 200 learners around Greater Alexandra, and reaching out to the traditionally hard to reach students in schools by broadening the selection process of accepting learners to be beneficiaries of the project compared to how traditionally students are selected to be beneficiaries of individual tutoring classes around Greater Alexandra.

Peer Tutors are the starting point of our Education intervention as they also

• Run life-orientation talks in Saturday classes with learners (Reports show that learners who have been taught by their peers are uniformly positive in their response. They enjoy the fact that their peer educators are close to them in age and feel that they understand and can relate to the issues that they face. Moreover, young people talk, think and learn best about sensitive topics with other young people, and are more likely to assimilate facts taught to them by young role models than by teachers).

• Refer individuals to other service providers within Greater Alexandra for counselling, family counselling, career counselling and many more.

• Carry out broad-based student motivational talks, one on one sessions with the students if they are underperforming and if the student is inconsistent in attending the Saturday classes or is not improving in their grades both at Saturday school and at their actual school.