News
All the latest news from Umzingisi:
Stanley House gives SSE Kitchen A Make-Over
The school of excellence has been lucky enough to get a kitchen-makeover in April. Stanley House from Wellington College in the UK raised funds of R15000 to be used to renovate the kitchen at our School of Excellence.
Bridgwater College Sports Tournament
On the 31 March 2011, the New Brighton Oval hosted the Bridgwater Umzingisi Tournament organized and run by Bridgwater College. Bridgwater College from the UK has sent 40 of their Sports HMS students to South Africa. In conjunction with Umzingisi Foundation, they organized the sports tournament as a final event for their two week stay. The tournament consisted of 6 of the local previously disadvantaged schools in New Brighton and Zwide in Port Elizabeth.
SSE Holiday Camp
On the 28th January 54 Umzingisi students embarked on a wonderful journey to Bushpig Adventures in Kragga Kamma. They boarded their Algoa Bus along with Shanki, Thembani, S’dima, Spakes and Jessica and left their school at 8am. The purpose of the camp served as many things, a reward for those kids that had performed well and had participated fully with good attendance last year, as well as for new members of the scholarship program to get to know each other and the staff, and finally for the students to develop their life skills, leadership and teamwork during the camp.
Umzingisi links with a Historical Johannesburg School
Umzingisi has recently formed a unique relationship with Jeppe High School for Boys, which has the history of being the oldest public school in Johannesburg as well as one of the top 20 boys’ schools in the country and has produced some inspirational individuals such as Jake White (World Cup winning South African Rugby Coach). Jeppe has a number of Scholarship Funds, with the Theo Jackson scholarship fund being the link between the school and Umzingisi.
SSE Girls Win Tournament
Umzingisi was invited by Imbewu South Africa to take part in a World AIDS Day Knock-Out Tournament, which was held at the Dan Qeqe Stadium in Zwide on the 1st December. The tournament had netball, tennis, basketball and 5-a-side soccer games for U/13s and U/16s.
SSE Sports Update
Soccer:
The U/15 boys recently took part in an AOC Tournament that was held in the Kwa-Noxolo Township. Eight teams took part in this and our boys won both their matches, facing the hosting team, Ace Milan, in the final. With a draw of 1-1, it was an unfortunate loss on the penalties for our Umzi boys.
YDF programme reaches the wider Eastern Cape
With the experience we have on the YDF curriculum, we’re doing training for other organisations as we are qualified to do so. In the month of October, we hosted seven employees from Imvomvo, an NGO in East London, for a period of two weeks where we did intense training with them in the first week.
SSCN Youth Exchange Tour
Umzingisi was involved in a two week youth exchange programme organised by the Sport for Social Change Network (SSCN). This programme involved 5 NGO’s each sending out participants to learn about the other ones. There were a total of 9 youth leaders, from 4 organisations in the Eastern Cape and 1 in Lesotho.
UmziPear Kid to Kid Outreach
Following a New Zealand Documentary project we were involved in with Pearson High School earlier in the year, the Pearson netball girls decided they wanted to do something special for their new buddies at Umzingisi. The project had been about forming relationships between the Umzingisi and Pearson kids where they had been paired up for the week long project so they could learn more about each other and discover differences and similarities in their different environments and backgrounds.
Umzingisi partners with Pearson High School
Umzingisi has started a very promising relationship with one of the top multi-racial high schools in Port Elizabeth. From the beginning of 2010, Pearson High School has and will be continuing to offer scholarships to talented kids brought to them by Umzingisi. The kids have to excel in sport and ideally start in grade 8 at Pearson as this works out best for their academic progress.