I work with a charity called Africa Food for Thought. If you have been following my blog for a while, you will know about them. We work to provide food security for children in support of education. More than 18 000 children to the west of Johannesburg, South Africa are benefitting from the work that Africa Food for Thought is doing. Here is an early post explaining our work.
This year Africa Food for Thought launched a competition for the teachers in the schools we support, called Impande YeSizwe. You can read more about the competition in this post.
Competition for teachers in non-fee-paying schools in South Africa
Here is a quote from the post that gives the essence of what we tried to accomplish.
"South Africa has one of the world’s worst education systems", The Economist declared in January 2017. Education is the ‘root of our nation’ (Impande YeSizwe) and we are in trouble! But in the midst of this broken system, we have educators who are giving their all to shape a better tomorrow for our children… even when they lack resources… when they have 50 learners in their class… when the system fails them. Africa Food for Thought wants to celebrate those educators for whom teaching is a calling.
This competition is about finding, celebrating, rewarding and holding them up to be emulated.
The competition was an awesome success. It was a great opportunity to teach kids in primary school something about active citizenship and the power of each individual's vote. You can see something of the voting process in 10 schools in this post.
The votes were tallied and each school's winner was announced at the school. The excitement was great. Each winner received a R2000 cash prize and multiple smaller prizes.
There were 10 winners from 10 schools. A panel was formed by representatives from Africa Food for Thought and the corporate sponsors of the competition. Each finalist was interviewed by this panel and an overall winner determined.
The panellists were hugely encouraged by the finalists. The children had chosen well and the finalists were all dedicated teachers willing to do whatever it takes to ensure a better education for our children.
The overall winner was announced at Africa Food for Thought's AGM on 26 May 2018. As tough as the competition was, Elizabeth Marumola, from Lesego Primary in Muldersdrift was the clear winner. She had the unanimous support of the panel and is a worthy winner of the inaugural Impande YeSizwe competition. Here she is pictured with Peter Hall, chairperson of Africa Food for Thought.
Congratulations Elizabeth!
We wish you well and celebrate you as 'the root of our nation' (Impande YeSizwe). Thank you for your dedication to the education of the children we serve!
Dear reader,
Can I ask that you will add your congratulations to Elizabeth in the comments to this post? Please mention from which country/place you hail. I will make sure Elizabeth reads your words as I am sure she will be encouraged by them.
All images belong to Africa Food for Thought and are used here with their permission.