On Saturday, 10 February, FunDza hosted a ‘Creative Me’ workshop for Ikusasa Lelethu, a tutoring organisation that works with two schools in Khayelitsha. This group has a Grade 10 programme which tutors over 40 learners in mathematics, accounting, life sciences, economics and physical science. Their programme is conducted at Luhlaza High School and has made a huge difference as the learners are doing well in their academics, according to the feedback of the educators. The group also has a programme in primary schools called Umtha Welanga working with the Grades 6 and 7 learners. The learners are tutored in English and Maths. Ikusasa Lelethu has a dedicated team of eight Tutors and is still recruiting more and more young people to join their work.
The venue for the workshop was at Luhlaza high school in Khayelitsha. A total of 22 learners attended the ‘Creative Me writing workshop’. All learners, facilitators as well as the founder of the group, Sisonke Mengcane, arrived early in eager anticipation. Even though I did not personally attend the workshop, I could feel the excitement as Sisonke kept on sending me WhatsApp messages and pictures of our unsuspecting facilitators. The FunDza facilitators, Sive and Sonja, were absolutely amazing according to Sisonke who was delighted with the responses of the learners and facilitators.
Sisonke’s exact sentiments were as follows: “The day showed some great discipline starting from the arrival time which was on point! We take our hats off for your amazing facilitators who took us on a journey with the learners to be able to create a perfect story through own imaginations. Over the years of working with my learners I have never witnessed such jubilation in their faces for being allowed to share their creativeness in the little groups that they were.”
“We had some authentic creative stories which the learners came up and presented to the whole from the activity of choosing from a group of saying and make write a short story from it. We believe that the workshop was a huge success for us with our development and wish that we can have more workshops in the year with a large group of learners,” he added.
According to facilitator Sive Sibenya: “The kids were beautiful, lively, energetic, and had so much positive energy. I absolutely loved every minute of it. The kids were so engaged and ready to participate. It was inspiring to see young people that interested in something that was relevant to academics, and I was even happier to find that so many had sacrificed their time to come school on a Saturday. A few things that stood out for me were the brilliant minds of these kids and how uniquely creative they were. Working with Sonja, is also refreshing, as she has a very unique style of engaging with kids, she’s so passionate about her job. All in all, the workshop was as educational for me, as it was for the kids. I feel very special and privileged to have brought something new into young people’s lives.”
The workshop was a great success as all parties seemed to have similar enthusiastic sentiments.