UCT alumna’s NPO delivers learning material during lockdown

Outliers, a local non-profit organisation that operates in some of the Western Cape’s most marginalised communities, has distributed more than 20 000 educational resources tailored towards primary and high school learners. This has been done to ensure that the learners remain focused on their schoolwork during lockdown.

Headed by Dr Heidi Segal, a University of Cape Town (UCT) alumna, Outliers is a network of 200 after-school tutoring programmes that supports thousands of learners from under-resourced communities. Their aim is to help learners perform better at school and to ultimately help them gain entry into university.

The after-school programmes provide learners with much-needed academic support and create safe spaces where children can continue to learn. Learners have access to workbooks, tutors, reading material and stationery. During school holidays many of the tutoring programmes run a range of holiday clubs to keep children occupied and safe during the day.

Dr Segal and her team feared that the hard-won gains achieved by learners who regularly attended these tutoring programmes would be lost when the nationwide lockdown came into effect in March.

“Facilitators had similar concerns for their learners – the safety and well-being of children was the biggest one,” she said.

Added to that, she said that facilitators were also concerned that the school drop-out rate would increase dramatically once schools eventually resumed.

“Back then we had no idea when that would be.”

Currently, around 40 000 children drop out of school in South Africa every year.

Remain engaged

To ensure that learners remained focused on and engaged with their schoolwork while schools and after-school programmes were closed, Segal and her team set the wheels in motion to produce educational packs (edu-packs) that learners could work through while at home.

The workbooks were collated in line with the Department of Basic Education’s condensed curriculum and consist of various materials, including grade-specific mathematics exercises and literacy exercises focused on comprehension and reading for meaning.

Stationery is also included in the edu-packs to ensure that learners can complete the activities. Depending on various donations, the packs are often supplemented with readers from Nal’ibali or Book Dash, both literacy non-profit organisations. Exercise books and, on occasion, even Lindt chocolates have been included.

“Some organisations we partnered with used bicycles to enable door-to-door visits, while others used street committees and walked to deliver the edu-packs in their neighbourhoods.”

Outliers then partnered with community action networks and other community-based organisations to ensure that the learning material reached learners across the province.

“We were on a mission and explored every means available to us. We enlisted the services of organisations and individuals who had access to transportation and who, during the hard lockdown, received an essential service permit,” Segal said.

“Some organisations we partnered with used bicycles to enable door-to-door visits, while others used street committees and walked to deliver the edu-packs in their neighbourhoods.”

By collaborating with the many community action network kitchens that emerged during lockdown through Cape Town Together (a network of neighbourhood-based action groups that responds to communities’ needs during the COVID-19 pandemic), some children also received their edu-packs when they collected their daily meals.

Lack of resources

Providing learners with edu-packs in hard copy was essential.

Segal said that more than 80% of learners in South Africa have no access to online learning – either because they lack access to tech devices or the costs associated with data are too high.

She fears that without access to printed educational resources, the gap between learners from quintile one (the poorest public schools) and quintile five (the least poor public schools) would widen considerably.

“We’re familiar with how poorly our children at lower-quintile schools perform, compared [with] those who attend higher-quintile schools,” she added.

And while many private and former Model C schools continued teaching the curriculum during lockdown using a temporary online learning methodology, Segal said that this form of learning – though innovative – was not accessible to learners in under-resourced communities.

“Online learning is reserved for more privileged learners with access to resources,” she said.

“With more than 10 years of experience in sourcing and vetting relevant materials for [learners] in our network, we knew we could and should do something immediately to help reduce the risk of thousands of students getting left behind.

The show goes on

Though schools have reopened, Segal said that teachers continue to struggle to keep up with the demands that come with operating during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“These edu-packs help kids to learn at home and enable revision of core concepts, which they need regardless of whether schools are open or closed.”

So, her team continues to supply edu-packs to learners who need them.

“These edu-packs help kids to learn at home and enable revision of core concepts, which they need regardless of whether schools are open or closed.”

The non-profit has also added extra psychosocial support training to its offering to ensure that facilitators are equipped with the necessary skills to adequately support learners in their network.

“This pandemic has taken so much from many of us, and supporting our facilitators is and always will be important to us,” she said.

To date more than 20 000 edu-packs have been distributed thanks to many individuals, schools and churches across the city rallying together to support this initiative.

“As long as we continue to receive requests for support by way of edu-packs, Outliers will continue to distribute these educational resources.”

Email Outliers to make a contribution and help them distribute more edu-packs.