Fair Cape Cares Foundation commits to educating vulnerable children at Durbanville Children’s Home

In line with its ongoing commitment to the social welfare of South African communities, the Fair Cape Cares Foundation recently pledged to the ongoing sponsorship of a remedial teacher at the Durbanville Children’s Home.

The Durbanville Children’s Home fills the gap in service-provision to support vulnerable children in need of care and their families, with the ultimate aim of restoring them to a healthy family relationship. The home is presently caring for 144 children between the ages of two and 18 years.

Johanna Strauss, the home’s interim manager, says that many of the children have little or no experience of prior formal schooling. “These children often come from neglectful families, which do not prioritise their studies, so our children have a low level of schooling, and have routinely repeated one or two grades.  The children feel tremendous frustration at not having the skills appropriate for their current grade, and fear rejection and prejudice from other children.

They are at a disadvantage compared to their peers. To counteract this, the home sought to introduce a programme to make up for their educational shortcomings and facilitate their reintegration into the school system, thus resisting the temptation to drop out. With the assistance of Fair Cape we have been able to implement our remedial support programme, which will create hope and new opportunities for our children.”

Joel Serman, a trustee of the Fair Cape Cares Foundation, said that Fair Cape, which has been a long-time supporter of the Durbanville Children’s Home, is honoured to assist with the care of the children in this manner. “Our slogan of ‘do the right thing’ is not just a slogan to us at Fair Cape: we live these values and strive to deliver on them through our actions every single day. Countless studies show that education is the single most empowering weapon against abuse and other social ills, so we felt that making a concrete contribution to educating these children would give them the best chance at a better life in future.”

The remedial teacher at the home has a B.Ed. Degree in Foundation Phase Education and has remedial teaching experience in schools in Manenberg and Boston in the US. She focuses on the core subjects, such as mathematics and languages, to fill the gaps and on establishing a routine for the children.

For media enquiries, please contact Gillian Gernetzky on +27 82 892 8378 or gillian@percheron.co.za.

Additional high res images of the remedial teacher working her magic are available here.