Exams

2016 Education Update

We have been monitoring the children in our programme academically since 2012. This has been done as consistently as possible by means of a June and November exam administered to all children from Grade 1 until Grade 7 (and for a few projects until Grade 11). This allows us to now look back at the past 5 years and determine the long term impact our interventions make for our beneficiaries. When we compare the academic results from 2012 to the...

Olympians

Inspiring Olympic Medallists

Children at Buffet Olives farm enjoyed an enlightening and inspiring talk by South African Olympic rowers, Lawrence Brittain and Shaun Bryce Keeling. They even got to hold the silver medal which the pair won at the 2016 Rio Olympics!! The athletes shared with our learners the success they will enjoy if they just persevere and have the right positive mindset – wise words and absolute proof as Lawrence has battled cancer… and won. As they say to one another: “BELIEVE”! Huge thanks...

Mayor

Drakenstein Mayor Visits

Children at Buffet Olives farm welcomed the Drakenstein Mayor, Councillor Conrad Poole, to their after-school on 9 November. He was very interested in finding out more about our 3 R’s Programme and so enjoyed watching the drama games that he jumped up and joined in! The Mayor noticed how much the children enjoy the programme and was particularly impressed with the way in which facilitator, Catharine discussed with the children how lessons from the game can be applied in their everyday...

MTB Training with Ariane Kleinhans

Ariane Kleinhans is a professional mountain biker from Switzerland, who currently lives in Stellenbosch. She has taken first place on the podium at many MTB events around the world, including winning 3 Absa Cape Epic titles! On 23 October 2016, after easily winning the ladies’ 42km race in the Buffet Olives MTB Classic, Ariane headed over to our pump track for some coaching with our girls. Ariane would demonstrate a technique and the Buffet Olives girls would copy. By the end...

Podium Finishers

We are extremely proud of our boys and girls from Buffet Olives farm who rode in the Buffet Olives MTB Classic on 23 October. All of our children did incredibly well and Curtley (photo, left) finished 3rd overall in the Mens’ 14km mountain bike event! In the Mens’ 5km race, Linwill came 1st and Sturton, 3rd while in the Ladies’ event, Vanashly came 1st and Jadelyn finished in 2nd place. We are certainly seeing some talent in our youngsters! PHOTO CREDIT: John Hishin –...

3 R’s News: Reading, Running, Righting

Reading: We are always looking for effective ways to introduce our children to new texts and to focus on reading for meaning and enjoyment. Shared Reading is a whole-class activity: the children follow a text together, listening to how the punctuation, expression and intonation should sound, as the facilitator reads to them. With older learners multiple copies of the same text are needed while with younger children, Big Books or enlarged texts are used while the facilitator points to each line as...