Baviaans Learning Centre

The Baviaanskloof, situated in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, faces a multitude of challenges, including poverty, inequality, and limited access to essential services. The area is comprised of about 2000 people, the majority of whom are living below the bread-line. The area's remoteness exacerbates these difficulties, impacting all residents but particularly affecting those lacking resources. Despite being a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the social environment remains vulnerable, with poverty pervasive, worsened by limited job opportunities and the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. The lack of access to education further hinders the community's growth and economic potential, leading to high unemployment rates, especially among the youth.

In 2023, we conducted a Needs Assessment to understand the problem more thoroughly and to redefine our assumptions. Through this, we identified numerous challenges, including inadequate learning facilities outside of government schools, lack of support for children with special learning needs, financial barriers hindering access to higher education, transport issues, underfunding, and understaffing in local primary schools, and limited parental capacity to provide educational support. These challenges underscore the need for comprehensive interventions, including improved resourcing, administrative support, and the establishment of effective Early Childhood Development care facilities, to promote early childhood preparation for formal schooling and to foster a culture of learning within families.  

Although we are specifically focused on our local community in the Baviaanskloof, we believe that many rural areas in South Africa can also benefit from our solution and we hope to develop it into a model which can be scaled to other communities as well.

Further research highlights a multitude of challenges within Eastern Cape's educational sector, particularly in rural areas like Baviaanskloof. Key issues include infrastructure inadequacies, shortages of qualified teachers, limited access to digital resources, and barriers to learning for children with special educational needs. These challenges contribute to high dropout rates, disparities in educational outcomes, and exacerbated socio-economic vulnerabilities within the community.  

Our solution is a very simple but effective intervention aimed at meeting the educational needs of our community through supplemented educational support and an introduction to digital literacy. Although we have a functioning school in the Baviaanskloof, they are struggling with the challenges of serving our community without adequate financial support from government. This has resulted in poor learning outcomes as well as the marginalization of children with special learning needs. 

Our after-school classes, provide a safe learning environment for the children of our community to learn and play. Here, they receive one on one tutoring and assistance with their learning difficulties and they have access to learning tools which are not available to them at school or at home.

One of our key focuses is to improve digital literacy in our community in the hopes that it will provide the youth of tomorrow with better opportunities for growth in a world where the entire local economy is based on dwindling farming operations and tourism, providing very few employment opportunities.

We are currently focused on our own community in the Baviaanskloof, South Africa. This is an extremely remote rural community that faces many challenges and that have been historically marginalized and disadvantaged by historic and current government policies which have failed to support them during a time when the local economy has been dramatically reduced, leaving many people unemployed and living below the poverty line. 

To give context, the area in which we operate, Studtis, is located approximately 100km from Willowmore, the nearest town. The only access to this area is a badly maintained gravel road which winds through numerous river crossings and mountain passes. The vast majority of the residents are unemployed and rely on social assistance from the government for survival. The local economy has shifted over the past twenty years from a primarily farming-based economy to much smaller, tourism based operations which does not provide enough employment to sustain the economy. Furthermore, the individuals within this community are at a huge disadvantage to the outside world due, not only to the extreme poverty and remoteness of the area but also because they are being underserved by the government. 

This is especially true for the children and youth of the area, who face uncertain futures in the current social environment in South Africa but whose problems are also exacerbated by a lack of access to communication and technology. The problem of digital literacy in the area, puts them at a huge disadvantage in the outside job market and limits them to low-income work opportunities.

Furthermore, there is little or no support for these children when they are struggling with learning difficulties and require more support than what they are currently receiving from government or at home.

We are a grassroots organization, operating and living in the same area where we work. We have extensive ties to the local community through our work and because we avail ourselves to listen to and understand the needs of our community. Our organization was established on the basis of a needs assessment that was conducted in November 2023 and which made use of interviews with local stakeholders to better understand the problems and needs within our community.

We are currently based on a community farm in the Baviaanskloof and have entered into consultations with the local management committees to try to better understand their needs and to provide support that will have a lasting impact.

Furthermore, we are in the process of establishing an advisory committee for our organization consisting of prominent stakeholders who can help us to move forward with sensitivity to our communities problems. 

Although our Learning Centre has been in operation since 2022, we have only been able to establish our organization in March 2024, as a registered non-profit company. We are currently working to raise funds in order to establish ourselves and make our operations sustainable. We would like to develop the organization further and provide more value to our community through targeted interventions. 

Although we do require funding to keep our operations sustainable, we are operating at a limited capacity and could benefit from connecting to networks and organizations that are working in similar environments and addressing similar problems. We have found that in this field of work, the right networks and mentorships are equally as valuable as as funding opportunities and can help us to fill the gaps in our knowledge base.

Our solution is simple and therefore on the surface may not seem that innovative. However, what makes it innovative is that it is currently the only program operating in the Baviaans area that supports education and well being in children and youth. Furthermore, the simple act of making technology and STEM based learning systems more accessible to rural communities in South Africa is a massive step towards improving education outcomes outside of rural areas. We believe that through these interventions, we can help our community grow into a global community. This is a solution that we hope to be able to scale up to other rural communities within the Baviaans area and beyond.

Theory Of Change:

By looking at the root causes and converting them to positive outcomes, we can develop an understanding of the needs of the community and kind of action required to address those needs. In this process, we have formulated the following long-term goal:

Enhanced overall well-being, education, and economic empowerment for the community, with a focus on the children and youth living in the Baviaanskloof and surrounding areas.

These are the intermediate Outcomes:

• Improved Educational Foundations and Opportunities
• Enhanced Skills Development and Economic Growth
• Improved Access to Communication and Information
• Increased Participation in Sports and Physical Activities
• Upliftment of Disadvantaged Individuals

Strategies:

• Educational Foundation and Opportunities: Enhancing the educational foundation primarily falls under the responsibility of the government. While a non-profit organisation cannot replace or assume the full role of the government in addressing underfunded and understaffed schools, there are ways to support these institutions. Non-profit organisations can complement government efforts by providing after-school classes and activities, offering additional resources, and facilitating campaigns to gather donations on behalf of the schools. These efforts can help alleviate some of the challenges faced by underfunded schools and overburdened teachers, providing valuable support and resources where possible.
• Skills Development and Economic Growth: Supporting skills development and small business growth requires addressing minimal income opportunities, rural isolation, and poor road conditions. Initiatives can include vocational training, job placement programs, and access to resources for small businesses.
• Access to Communication and Information: Improving access to communications for disadvantaged groups involves addressing the lack of communication facilities. This can include initiatives to improve internet access, digital literacy programs, and community information hubs.
• Promotion of Sports and Physical Activities: Promoting sports and physical activities requires addressing apathy for sports club support, sports field maintenance, and the lack of equipment and facilities. This can involve the establishment and support of sports clubs, maintenance of sports facilities, and provision of sports equipment.
• Upliftment of Disadvantaged Individuals: Uplifting disadvantaged individuals will involve addressing social problems, including addressing social issues, substance abuse, and lack of support for children with special needs. Initiatives can include community support programs, counselling services, and support for individuals with special needs.

Assumptions:

• By complementing government efforts through after-school classes and activities, as well as campaigns for donations, we can contribute to improved educational outcomes and experiences for children and youth, despite the limitations faced by underfunded schools.
• Supporting skills development and small business growth will lead to increased economic opportunities for community members, contributing to improved livelihoods and economic empowerment.
• Improving access to communication and information will increase access to resources and opportunities for the disadvantaged groups, leading to improved access to services and support.
• Promoting sports and physical activities will lead to improved physical and psychological well-being for children and youth, positively impacting their overall development and health.
• Uplifting disadvantaged individuals will lead to improved social cohesion, mental well-being, and support for vulnerable members of the community, resulting in an overall improvement in community well-being.

Although the kind of impact we aim to have on our community is not always tangible, we feel that there are definite positive outcomes that we can actively measure and evaluate.

As we are focused on improving learning outcomes in rural communities, we aim to achieve this through firstly improving general literacy and educational outcomes. All of the students who attend our after school classes are asked to submit their school marks from the start of their attendance at the Learning Centre to the end of the school year. This way, we can determine if our work is having the desired impact on general learning outcomes.

However, in addition to this we are also adding value to our learning systems by introducing educational systems that are not available in rural schools, such as access to computers and communication. Through these programs, we are able to demonstrate a remarkable impact on the students who are attending the Learning Centre through tracking their digital literacy.

Although currently, we are still in the process of acquiring the necessary equipment and facilities which we can use to further develop our goal of creating a digitally literate society in the Baviaanskloof and hopefully leveraging the global remote work market to create jobs and income opportunities for women, children and youth within our community. We also acknowledge at this stage of our inception that we may be lacking in the capacity to develop comprehensive monitoring and evaluation systems that we can use to measure our impact and we hope that through opportunities like these, that we may be able to develop sufficient systems for evaluating our progress.

Currently we are living in a technologically deficient community. To give context to this statement, it has only been about seven years since we have had full internet access in our community and even today communication is one of the key problems in our area. Although in recent times we have gained limited access to the cellular network and limited Wi-fi facilities, there is still a massive deficit in people within our community who are able to access these technologies. Furthermore, for the children and youth of our community access is even more limited. 

As there is no internet access at the local school and there are no computers, smartphones or tablets for them to learn with, they are often disadvantaged in comparison to their peers in urban areas. Our innovation aims to change that through introducing children to commonly available technology and learning resources. Once we have developed the project beyond the pilot phase and we able acquire the necessary equipment, we would like to move beyond teaching fundamental skills and begin teaching more advanced programs, like robotics and coding. 

We are currently, three individuals, a marketing expert, an office and business administrator and a school teacher. We do not currently have funding to employ more people but hope that through the development of our programs we can also train and employ members of our local community to assist us in our program activities.

Our Learning Centre has been in operation since 2022 but we have only managed to acquire the necessary funding to establish ourselves as a functioning non-profit company since March 2024.

We are living in a community primarily comprised of indigenous members of the Khoi-San community. Although at present we do not have the funding to employ people within our programs, we aim to use this opportunity to create jobs and income opportunities for the people within our community. As our organization cannot function effectively with only three individuals, our long-term goal would be to bring on new board members who are representative of the local Khoi-San community to help us in our programs. In addition to this, we are in the process of setting up an advisory panel, comprised of local stakeholders to aid us in the development of our programs and to provide advice and guidance when it comes to hiring new team members in order to ensure that we remain inclusive and focused on the community that we serve.

Three Programs for Community Development

Baviaanskloof Learning Centre
Addressing the understaffing and underfunding of the local school, our after-school tuition center provides free academic support to primary school learners. This safe space not only helps children with their schoolwork but also allows them to gain exposure to technology and other skills that were previously inaccessible to them.

Baviaanskloof Support Centre
Designed to meet the ongoing need for administrative and communication support in the community, this center provides free Wi-Fi, emergency telephone services, photocopying, typing services, and assistance with various government services and applications. Our goal is to further develop this center into a hub for skills development by providing access to computers, tools, and equipment to introduce new skills to the community.

Sports Development for the Baviaanskloof Youth
Recognizing the talent and potential in the local youth, our program aims to rebuild the sports facilities at the local school, making sports accessible to the community. We seek to work with the school, sports club, and community to improve facilities and provide necessary equipment such as shoes, uniforms, and other gear, enabling the youth to develop their full potential through sports.

Business Model
Our business model is rooted in community engagement, research, and the development of sustainable programs that address the unique needs of the Baviaanskloof and Baviaans district. By identifying and directly responding to the pressing challenges faced by the community, we have created three impactful programs that align with our mission and vision.

Sustainability and Funding
While we have secured short-term funding to support our initiatives, we recognize the need for further financial support to ensure the long-term sustainability of our programs. We invite individuals and organizations to contribute, whether through financial donations, in-kind support, or by spreading awareness about our cause. Our aim is to maintain a lasting, positive impact on this struggling community, and we believe that with the support of our partners and donors, this can become a reality.

Our non-profit company relies heavily on donations and good will to operate. So far we have successfully acquired funding to continue our operations until the end of 2024. Beyond 2024, we will have to secure further funding to continue. Our operation is very small scale at present and does not require massive amounts of funding but we have a targeted and active donation campaign which we use to secure funding for our business. In addition to this, we are actively campaigning for grant funding to sustain our business. We are also currently aiming at corporate funders for assistance as well.