Dear Friends of St. Vincent’s,

Greetings from St Vincent Children’s Home! It is a blessing to be so far from each other and yet be connected in this special way. We thank you for your efforts in supporting us to attend to the holistic needs of the children in our care.  Currently, children at St. Vincent’s go to
public schools in the surrounding communities. Though the schools in these impoverished townships do their best to empower the young people with knowledge, the teachers and resources are few.   Classrooms are crowded, parental involvement is minimal, and children
struggle to learn.  Thanks to the Khanyisela Scholarship, we have been able to start to address some of these educational difficulties:

• 11 high school girls attend educational tutoring at the University of KwaZul-Natal.  This program helps them with their school projects and prepares them for final and national examinations.  We are able to pay for the tutoring fees, as well as transportation to the university, texts, and school supplies.
• The younger children at St. Vincent’s have been enrolled in Mariannhill Primary, a multi-lingual school with greater financial and academic resources.  This early start to high quality schooling provides the children with a solid foundation as they progress in their
  education and eventually transition from St. Vincent’s.   

We hope that all will go well with our plan to help our precious children to be the best people they can be. Although we are not able to offer them the joy to be raised by biological parents and we may not be able to make up for what they have lost, it is our dream to heal the wounds of  their childhood. We wish for these children to know that the world cares about them. By empowering them with education, we can give them back their future that for so long has been overshadowed by poverty and HIV/AIDS.  We know that by supporting children and by allowing  them to  grow and develop they will discover the beauty they possess inside and become the Greatest  Future Leaders of our time.

May God bless you all for all that you do for Our Children and participating in our mission of the Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood.

Love & Prayers

Sr M. Gorrette Silindile Mtheku CPS (Social Worker/ Principal)

P.S. This year we have one girl (Bongiwe M.) who is completing her final year of high school. She will sit for her final examination in the beginning of December.  Please keep her in your prayers.  She wishes to study Social Work when she finishes high school.  

A Note from the Students of St Vincent’s

To the Most Special People

We want to take this opportunity to thank you for the great help that you have given us. We thank you so much, and we don’t even have so many words to say how much we appreciate what you have done for us. Now we have the opportunity to be the best learners we can be and be the most intelligent, brilliant learners in school. We have been able to gain more knowledge and more opportunities to have a better future.

We thank you so much. May God bless you provide for you.  We will always pray for you.

With Love,

High School Girls (St Vincent Children’s Home, Mariannhill, South Africa)

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So many wonderful things are happening at St. Vincent Children’s Home in Mariannhill these days.  This past July, eleven high school students began a weekly tutoring program at a local university to master subjects learned in the classroom and help them prepare for continued education.  Meanwhile, the younger students have been finishing up the school year at their local school, their last year struggling
in crowded and under-resourced classrooms.  Starting in January they will attend a higher quality school with greater academic opportunities.  Thanks to your generous support of the Khanyisela Scholarship, high schoolers and primary school-aged children at St. Vincent’s are being given a leg up in their education and their future.

We also recognize a few staffing changes at St. Vincent’s.  Sr. Immaculate, while she is missed as principal of St. Vincent’s, was appointed to the important position of Mother Superior of the Precious Blood community in Mariannhill.  Because the Precious Blood Sisters oversee St. Vincent’s, Sr. Immaculate is able to maintain her role as a leader and positive force for the children’s home.  We also welcome Sr. Maria Gorette, the new principal of St. Vincent’s.  A social worker by background, Sr. Maria Gorette is full of spirit, life, and love for the children in her charge.  Her passion for social change is contagious, and she’s already shown great support and enthusiasm for the Khanyisela Scholarship. She recently wrote us a very heart-felt note of thanks, which we’ve included on the next page.

None of this – the opportunity to improve the lives of children at St. Vincent’s, the chance to keep productive relationships with the staff who serve them – would be possible without you.  Thank you for standing with the Khanyisela Scholarship program for these past three years.  You have supported us as we worked with St. Vincent’s to develop the most effective and sustainable ways to meet the needs of their children, even as these ways transformed over time.  For your financial support, prayers, words of encouragement, and steady presence, we are sincerely grateful.  Below you will find a description of the programs currently being supported by the Khanyisela Scholarship.

In Peace,

Anne Whiting & Rachel Beggs

Current Programs

Primary School Program

Khanyisela’s primary school program addresses challenges and disparities in education starting in the earliest  years in school.  Currently, younger children at St. Vincent’s attend the neighboring township schools.  The children struggle in these impoverished schools with crowded
classrooms, few books, and no extracurricular programs.  Through the Khanyisela Scholarship, younger children at St. Vincent’s will begin the January 2012 school year at a higher-quality elementary school in a more privileged community.  The scholarship pays not only school fees, but transportation, uniforms, school supplies, and books.  By cultivating the children’s highest potential from these early years, we create a solid foundation for future successes in school and in life.

High School Program

High School girls who live at St. Vincent’s are now able to supplement their education with tutoring offered at a local university.  The University of KwaZulu-Natal is one of South Africa’s most prestigious universities and is well known for teaching curriculum.  St Vincent’s high schoolers visit the university once a week to master academic subjects, gain confidence in learning, and develop critical thinking skills.  Through the individual attention they receive, these young women realize their potential, allowing them to overcome the personal, social, and educational vulnerabilities that have beset them for so many years.  With solid footing they now begin their journey into adulthood and a future full of promise and hope.

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The Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood and the Priests and Brothers of the Mariannhill Missionaries have dedicated their lives to assisting the people of South Africa, specifically in areas of education and health care.  Over the many years of this Mission’s history, several famous people have been associated with Mariannhill and have made a positive impact on both the surrounding communities and the country.

Mohandas Gandhi arrived and settled in Durban, South Africa in 1893 to practice law.   During his time in Durban he faced much discrimination and persecution.  These events however, formed many of his social activist philosophies, especially those of non-violent protesting[1].  Durban is not far from the Mariannhill Mission and in 1894 Gandhi visited the Trappist Monks.  Gandhi writes of his experience in Mariannhill:

Mariannhill is a quiet little model village, owned on the truest republican principles. The principle of liberty, equality and fraternity is carried out in its entirety. Every man is a brother, every woman a sister … They take no intoxicating liquors… none may keep money for private use. All are equally rich or poor. They believe in no colour discrimination. The blacks are accorded the same treatment as whites… all was quit; the silence was broken only by the noise of the instruments in the workshops or the African children.[2]

Gandhi went on to form the Natal Indian Congress to unite the Indian people of South Africa into a successful political force that fought against oppression.

Steven Bantu Biko was a political activist and based many of his philosophies on the principles of Black Consciousness.  He was one of the founding members of the Black Peoples Convention which sought to improve communities in the Durban area with positive social projects.  Due to Biko’s strong public influence in the anti-Apartheid movement he was ‘banned’ and restricted by the government.  He was detained by the police force in Durban and sent under the government ban to his home province of Eastern Cape and was brutally tortured.  Steven Biko died in Pretoria on September 12, 1977.  His death though would lead to an international response against the Apartheid government and an arms embargo imposed on South Africa by the UN.[3] 

Steven Biko spent Matric (final year of high school) at St Francis College in Mariannhill before going on to study medicine at the University of Natal Medical School.  He was Head Prefect of his graduating class and left his fellow graduates and staff at the school with the following words:

Mariannhill has been a source of great inspiration to us.  The history of the College shows that she has produced teachers by the thousands, doctors and lawyers galore, priests and many other distinguished figures.  Therefore may we not expect to swell this list one day also?…we have had the benefit of an all-round preparation for facing the world.  I could mention the Debating society, which has trained many of us in public speaking…No less important is character-moulding and training in self-knowledge.[4]

Steven Biko left an indelible mark on the history of South Africa.  Even today, many young people turn to Biko’s example of perseverance and pride in being African to make a difference in their own communities.

More recently, Mariannhill hosted Brad Pitt and welcomed him at St Mary’s Hospital (2005).  Pitt spent much time in the children’s ward, playing with the kids and also speaking with their mothers.  This trip was organized to bring awareness of the positive effects of the government’s roll out of antiretroviral treatment.[5]  Brad Pitt continues to advocate for the people of Africa and is involved in organizations that hope to bring relief and awareness to this region of the world.

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For the past three years, we’ve been working with the staff of St. Vincent’s and the Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood, whose religious community oversees the orphanage, to create the Khanyisela Scholarship Program.  We’ve created strong, mutual collaboration with our friends at, in, and around St. Vincent’s to ensure that the scholarship best meets the needs of the children it serves.  We’ve learned the stories of children at the orphanage, stories that tell of tragic vulnerability yet shining potential.  We’ve shared these stories with like-minded individuals and sought their assistance, and have been driven forward by the generosity of those around us.

Over the coming months, the staff and Sisters at St. Vincent’s will decide which children will benefit the most from the scholarship.  With no students at St. Vincent’s currently at the point where they could begin planning for college, the scholarship will initially be used for primary and secondary education.  Scholarship recipients will be enrolled in high quality schools in this part of South Africa, schools that will allow them to fulfill their high academic potential and provide a clear pathway out of poverty.  The Khanyisela Scholarship supports the recipients financially, and our collaboration with St. Vincent’s ensures that the students are supported emotionally and academically for the highest chances of success.

The generosity of people in the United States, Canada, England, and South Africa have taken the Khanyisela Scholarship to this point.  We are filled with eager anticipation of what is to come in January 2012, and with gratitude for all who have supported the scholarship.  Thank you!

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My own experience of African mission work was made possible through PLMC.  I became involved with PLMC approximately seven years ago and was eagerly looking forward to a weekend of fellowship; it is always refreshing catching up and hearing new stories of work in the field. 

The presentation went very well, despite some nerves.  PLMC members were keen and very much supportive about this initiative.  There were discussions about St Vincent’s and also possibilities of future avenues for fundraising.  This meeting reminded me of the importance of sharing face to face with people in real time conversations; this gives people an opportunity to experience a testimony that is tangible and alive with enthusiasm.  Sharing the stories of the children at St Vincent’s also brings on a very real dimension, especially when viewing videos and pictures of time spent with the children.

Khanyisela sends hearty thanks to PLMC for the opportunity of making this presentation and sharing with them the light and joy that these children bring to all they meet. 

Siyabonga!

If you are interested in organizing a group to hear this presentation please contact us through our contact page on the Khanyisela website.

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It’s a safe assumption that children from poor backgrounds receive a lower quality education than children from more affluent backgrounds.  Researchers and policy analysts have come to this conclusion over and over again, and the pattern makes sense: poor communities simply have fewer resources to devote to maintaining high quality teachers, providing access to textbooks, and implementing programs that promote positive parent involvement.  What’s not always so obvious, though, is how low quality education reinforces the divisions between rich and poor and deepens the trap of poverty.  Nowhere is this more true than in South Africa, where divisions and inequalities run so deep.

A new report from Stellenbosch University, South Africa’s most reputable and highest ranking school (and another example of the country’s first-world infrastructure), recently found that as early as third grade, students in the top 20-percent of income levels are already far outperforming  all other children.  What does this mean in terms of perpetual poverty?  Children from poor communities continue to receive a low-quality education, and continue to under-perform their wealthier counterparts, all the way up to the time when they finally leave school.  At that point, they’re less qualified to be hired for well-paying jobs, and more likely to be unemployed and remain in poverty.  The cycle of poverty continues.

Schools in poor communities in South Africa receive a high level of public funding, so it seems that this redistributive approach should put poor schools on par with affluent ones.  However, schools in wealthier communities have the advantage of being able to charge high school fees to their students.  As a result, schools in affluent communities are simply better off financially –  and this means lower student to teacher ratios, the ability to maintain better teachers, more books for students, and more extracurricular activities.

Parental support, cultural norms, and the value that communities place on education is important, too, so looking only at a school’s financial status will never paint a whole picture.  Nevertheless, the same report found that when students from poor communities enrolled in schools in more privileged areas, these students performed better than students of the same socioeconomic and cultural background who remained in their neighborhood school.

This is where the Khanyisela Scholarship comes in.  While we can’t change the living situation of the orphaned children at St. Vincent’s Home, or change those parts of their lives that are so broken, or change the resources available in their neighborhood schools, we can change where they can go to school.  We can give them the support and financial means to attend a better school and receive a higher quality education.  We can give them a path out of poverty.

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It is big news, then, when students from poor communities reverse the trend and show remarkable educational achievement.  Helen Zille, the Premier of the Western Cape in South Africa, recognized this when she recently wrote an article for her party’s newsletter.  I read the newsletter online, and was so moved by it that I decided to re-post in here.  The students at Masibambane High School – with their resilience, their determination, and their tenacity – are a testament to the bright potential of all South African children.

Outliers – The story of Masibambane High School

By Helen Zille, Premier of the Western Cape

In his best-selling book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell seeks to unravel “the story of success” – exceptional success, not just great achievement.

He defines an outlier as a “statistical observation that is markedly different from the norm” and asks: why do some people achieve so much more than others? How come they lie so far outside the ordinary? What is the secret of their success? He tries to find the answers by examining the lives, times and circumstances of legendary figures like Bill Gates, the Beatles and various sports stars.

In each case, he finds the fortuitous combination of three key factors:

• Opportunity;
• Natural ability combined with enormous personal effort; and
• The proverbial “hand of fate” – a confluence of circumstances that make exceptional things possible.

I decided to test Gladwell’s thesis after the recent release of matric results. It is appropriate to use the term “Outlier” to describe a 17-year old boy, who lives in a backyard shack with his single mother and three siblings, and achieves 7 distinctions in matric, including 97%for Higher Grade Mathematics and the top award in the Western Cape for Life Sciences.

A shy, finely-built young man, Asavela Rawe arrived at the annual “matric achievers” ceremony in the school uniform of Masibambane High School. As I handed him his award (in my capacity as Premier), I resolved to find out what lay behind his exceptional achievement. When his classmate Monde Simbosini (three distinctions and 98% for Higher Grade Mathematics) was also  honoured, I was even more determined to find out more about the school that serves the poverty-stricken community of Bloekombos and achieved a 95% pass rate with 24 subject distinctions.

The purpose of my investigation was to address this simple question: what is the government’s role in creating the circumstances that offer children the opportunity to excel? If this can happen in Masibambane, what must we do to enable it to happen elsewhere? How much of Asavela and Monde’s academic success can be attributed to opportunity, intelligence, personal effort, and plain good luck?

During my investigation, I concluded that all these factors played a role, each a tributary flowing into a river, reinforcing one another to create the momentum for exceptional achievement.

Having sourced the cell number of the school’s principal, Mr Rajan Naidoo, I gave him a call. I apologised for phoning him on a Friday evening during the school holidays.

“No, no,” he replied. “I am at school. We always start the matrics a week early, so that they settle into the learning programme before the other pupils arrive.”

That said a lot about the ethos of Masibambane.

I asked Mr Naidoo if I could visit the school, and possibly meet the key matric teachers and the chair of the governing body. I also enquired whether it would be possible to speak to Asavela and Monde as well.

“Come tomorrow morning at 11,” he replied without hesitation.

The next day, Mr Naidoo welcomed me to the school accompanied by his daughter, Vinolia, a second year law student. She reminded me that we had met before at the opening of the state-of-the-art operating theatres at Red Cross Children’s hospital. I then recalled the lovely, petite young woman who had given a moving speech about the doctors and staff that had saved her life through a combined liver and kidney transplant.

While doctors were battling to save his daughter’s life, her father, then a deputy school principal in Durban, had applied for teaching posts in Cape Town, so that he could be near his desperately ill child. He was appointed principal at Masibambane in 2003, at that time one of the weakest schools in the Western Cape.

“The hand of fate”, I thought to myself as I applied Gladwell’s thesis.

On the final weekend of the holidays, the school property was a hive of activity – a gardener weeding, a cleaner sweeping and a handyman painting a classroom. “We are preparing for the opening of school next week” he said as he showed me the stacks of text books and stationery ready for distribution on day one.

He proudly walked me around his school, formerly a derelict provincial building which was converted into a school in 2001. He explained how he had driven each improvement, including a sports field with an embankment where pupils can sit and cheer their teams. There is a computer laboratory, a science laboratory, a small library (with a rack for daily newspapers), a kitchen for the feeding scheme, a new hall and toilets. The absence of any sign of vandalism was striking.

“Opportunity,” I thought to myself. Decent basic facilities are necessary to create opportunity, but entirely insufficient on their own. What Mr Naidoo said next, delivered in his characteristic matter-of-fact way, demonstrated why Masibambane is a school capable of producing “outliers”.

“When Vinolia came out of hospital, I wanted her to be near me, so I enrolled her here, at Masibambane,” he said. “I believe principals should be prepared to enroll their own children in their schools, to show they have confidence in the quality of the education they are providing for other children.”

He paused and added: “Vinolia was probably the first Indian child to attend a township school.”

We entered the new administration building, where a small gathering was waiting at a table laid with refreshments.

There I was introduced to Mr Yusif Sium, the school’s Mathematics teacher; Mr Andre Kleinschmidt, who teaches Physics and Life Sciences; Mr Shimeless Zeleke the Maths Literacy teacher; Mr Phumzile Dosi, the English teacher and Grade 12 co-ordinator; Mr Thabiso Motsana the Life Orientation teacher; and Mr Michael Vena, the Chair of the school governing body. There were also the star pupils, Asavela and Monde, together with Asavela’s mother, Lungiswa, who works at the “fruit and veg” section of Checkers in Kraaifontein. She told me she had not seen Asavela’s father since her baby was one month old. “That is why I say he died,” she said. Monde’s parents were visiting family in the Eastern Cape.

Mr Naidoo told me he and the governing body applied a strict “merit selection” policy when recommending teachers for positions at the school.

It was not always that way.

“When I came to this school, I confronted a governing body that had a different approach. Some were even prepared to accept bribes from applicants to be nominated for positions. Everything was politicised. It was difficult to change that approach. We had some conflict about it. But I knew the school would only succeed if we applied merit selection.”

He recalls the backing and support he received from an outstanding senior circuit manager, Mrs Ntombi Dwane, who helped him implement the new policy.

“Today I follow a strict policy of keeping party politics out of this school. We take decisions on their merits. We employ our staff on the basis of their ability to teach our pupils,” Mr Naidoo emphasised.

This was immediately apparent as I spoke to the teachers. Their own stories show an astounding confluence of excellence and effort, influenced by the inevitable “hand of fate”. Mr Sium, for example, is an Eritrean studying Actuarial Science part-time at the University of Cape Town. He earns his living as Masibambane’s Maths teacher.

The team ethos and mutual support were tangible. But the greatest insights came from the pupils themselves.

Asavela and Monde told me how they were able to stay at school until 9 o’clock at night, so that they could study in an environment conducive to learning. They negotiated the after-hours use of their classrooms with teachers, and worked in groups to assist others with their homework. Prefects were given the responsibility of locking up when they left. They were accountable for the state of the premises the next day.

Then Asavela made the following observation: “Monde and I would not have done so well if we were not competing with one another. We are good friends, but also competitors. That helped a lot. We will carry on as friendly competitors when we go to university.” Both will study Actuarial Science at UCT next year, and Mr Sium has made a commitment to continue teaching and supporting them.

I asked Asavela’s mother, Mrs Rawe whether we could visit her home – two shacks in the backyard of a RDP house in Bloekombos. Her baby was asleep on her bed. She told me the tiny premature boy had spent 5 months in Tygerberg Hospital, where she had remained with him. With his mother away, Asavela had spent most of his matric year taking personal responsibility for his younger siblings as well as himself. All of his belongings, including the computer he had won as a prize for his matric results, were neatly stacked in a small pile at the bottom of his narrow bed. I realised that he had come to the matric achiever’s function in his school uniform because it was probably the only suitable outfit he had.

Above his pillow, he had written on the shack wall in red koki: “A true gentleman is a true genius in calculation. A true legend lives on”.  Those words gave him inspiration, he told me.

We then went on to visit Monde’s house. He lives with his siblings in a backyard shack of his parents’ RDP house, where he shares a bed with his brother.

The rest of the space in the shack is taken up by a rickety home-made table on which stands an ancient Dell computer.

“You must never get rid of that computer,” Asavela said to Monde.  “That computer helped us to succeed.”

Monde told me that his uncle had been given the computer by his employers when they upgraded their systems. Together Monde and Asavela set it up – and through their own efforts turned this stroke of luck into yet another opportunity. At school, during the day, they downloaded matric papers and worked on them late into the night, on the old computer in the shack. “The computer kept freezing, but we kept starting it again,” said Monde.

That comment captured it all.

We often talk about the “opportunity” society. On that Saturday I saw what this idea can mean when opportunity meets singular human effort. The key priority of any government is to create real opportunities for all, so that people can use them.

It is true that “Outliers” like Asavela and Monde cannot be used as the yardstick for the rest of society. But the story of Masibambane as a school is a demonstration that many young people, of average ability, can become part of the “story of success”. There is no reason why this cannot become South Africa’s story too.

*This newsletter was written DA Leader’s SA Today weekly newsletter.  It can also be viewed at http://www.sagoodnews.co.za/newsletter_archive/outliers_the_story_of_masibambane_high_school.html

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This incredible musical gift begins at such a young age; you’ll often find the smallest tot, tentatively singing along with the adults, clapping their hands, and swaying to the solid beat. Likewise, many of the children at St Vincent’s have an extraordinary gift for music and they share it with anyone who comes to visit;  these children sing it out with everything they’ve got!!  Through the Khanyisela Scholarship, children may be able to further pursue musical studies, so that their stories take new shapes and meanings for the future generations.

Please listen to this amazing recording of the Soweto Gospel Choir…it’ll get you moving!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlqlZ1Y8ONQ

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Primary education is mandatory in South Africa.  According to the country’s Constitution, South Africa has an obligation to make education available and accessible.  All South Africans have the right to a basic education, including adult basic education and further education.

School in South Africa begins in grade 0, or grade R.  It’s the equivalent of our kindergarten, a time of school preparation and early childhood socialization.  Grades 0 to 9 make up General Education and Training, followed by Further Education and Training (FET) from grades 10 to 12.  Students either stay in high school during this time, or enter more specialized FET institutions with an emphasis on career-oriented education and training.   After passing the nationally-administered Senior Certificate Examination, or “matric,” some students will continue their education at the tertiary level, working towards degrees up to the doctoral level.  Over a million students are enrolled in South Africa’s 24 state-funded colleges and universities.

With a solid educational structure in place, South Africa continues the long and arduous process of overcoming the discriminatory legacy left behind by 40 years of apartheid education.  Under that system, white South African children received a quality schooling virtually for free.  Black students, on the other hand, had access only to “Bantu education”, a system based on the unjust philosophy that there was no place in South African society for black Africans “above certain forms of labor” (a quote attributed to HF Verwoerd, the architect of the Bantu Education Act of 1953).  In the 1970s, government spending on black education was one-tenth of spending on whites.  By the 1980s, teacher to pupil ratios in primary schools averaged 1:18 in white schools and 1:39 in black schools.  Even the standards for education were different between black and while schools: while 96 percent of all teachers in white schools had teaching certificates, only 15 percent of teachers in black schools were certified. Not surprisingly during apartheid, high school graduation rates for black students were less than half the rate for whites.

Bantu education was abolished with the end of apartheid in 1994.  Nevertheless, South Africa continues to struggle with inequality and educational disparities.  Seventeen years after the end of apartheid, the vast majority of poor black children are denied a quality education at severely deprived public schools.   Over three-quarters of these schools do not have libraries, and even more do not have a computer.  Around 90 percent of public schools have no science laboratory, and more than half of all pupils either have no text books or have to share them.  Over a quarter of public schools do not even having running water.

More affluent South Africans (read: White South Africans, along with a small but growing contingent from the black middle class) can afford to send their children to so-called former “Model C” schools, publicly funded schools that were previously allowed only for white students.  These schools charge extra school fees to supplement teachers’ salaries and buy extra resources.  Not surprisingly, these former white-only schools have far superior facilities and quality of education.

School outcomes tell the story of South Africa’s educational inequalities.  In 2009 just over half of black students passed the high school final exam, compared with 99 percent of whites.  Of the South African population over 20 years old, 65 percent of those who are white and only 14 percent of those who are black have a high school degree or higher.  The disparities remain at the university level.  Although black Africans account for 80 percent of the whole South African population, they make up less than half of all university students.  Less than one in 20 black South Africans ends up with a degree, compared with almost half of all whites.

Poor and orphaned children, such as those at St. Vincent Children’s Home, are particularly vulnerable to the discrepancies evident in South African education.  It is impossible for these children to access the quality of education available to more advantaged students.   Despite high aspirations and exceptional potential, they simply cannot afford to attend schools outside of those in the crowded black townships or poor rural areas where they reside.  Without a quality education, they are unable to escape their lives of poverty, allowing these inequalities to continue generation after generation.  The need for outside assistance, such as that offered by the Khanyisela Scholarship, is critical.  So what will the next South African school year bring besides learning, enlightenment, and growth?  Equality and justice, thanks to you and your support of the Khanyisela Scholarship.

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