The Western Cape Government’s Year Beyond Programme places young volunteers in local schools to run extra-curricula English and Maths support classes, as well as ‘clubs’. FunDza supplies the English content for the ten high schools that are part of the programme. The aim is that this support is online, so that volunteers facilitate the process, but learners get the content from their independent work on the computer. However, unsurprisingly for those familiar with e-learning, this doesn’t always work in practice!
There were many problems with connectivity and technology in the schools – computers weren’t working, or the tablets weren’t charged, or the internet connection was down. This was a huge challenge for the volunteers who often were very innovative about finding solutions. However it did mean, particularly in the early stages, that the afternoon sessions were focused on getting technology working (and often failing) rather than focusing on what is perhaps one of the main potential strengths of the programme: the relationships between the volunteers and the learners. Attendance at the high schools did decline, probably in a large part due to these problems.
However there were things that worked. Learners responded very positively to FunDza’s content: both the online course, and the books that were back-up for when they had to be off-line. Last year it became clear that the online longer stories were not as easy to work with as short pieces and blogs that could be completed in a session, and so the course this year had many of these shorter texts. These got very positive feedback from learners and volunteers. Volunteers commented on how the relevant and interesting topics inspired good discussions with the learners.
We have learnt much from this year. Next year we aim to do more training with the volunteers, not only on FunDza methodology and how to manage the online course, but more about general teaching techniques, and how to work with small groups. Volunteers will also initially focus more on building relationships with learners before they go online. We have also realised that learners themselves need some digital literacy for the course – even in just choosing usernames and passwords that are easy to remember!
So the YEBO programme has been a challenging one this year, which does mean that we have learnt a lot! We have enjoyed working with the other partners in the programme: Action Volunteers Africa, Ikamva Youth, SALT and Olico, as well as the government itself. This collaboration has been an exciting component of the project, and will, we hope, continue to be productive partnerships.