Gqeberha NPO making a real difference — one school at a time

Masinyusane is an isiXhosa word which means “let us uplift each other”, and that is exactly what the Nelson Mandela Bay nonprofit organisation is doing to make a difference — one school at a time.

The NPO based in Central has partnered with scores of schools in the metro in an effort to boost literacy in some of the most impoverished areas.

Its mission is “creating opportunities for impoverished children and youths to get the best education possible”.

Masinyusane executive director Zama Zulu said the NPO had two main objectives — addressing youth unemployment and improving children’s literacy.

“Masinyusane started working with primary schools in about 2014 with a focus on foundation phase mostly.

“That’s when we just realised that we needed to fix the problem right at the root,” he said.

The NPO specialises in teaching children between the ages of two and nine.

It ropes in unemployed young people to teach the little ones how to read, write and comprehend through various programmes, including Zazi Zandi (know your letter sounds).

“A lot of research will tell you that teaching the letters of the alphabet with the letter sounds is not necessarily the best way to teach a child to read but we wanted to find something that is so simple to teach because we’re taking inexperienced youths and then we train them on running that programme.

“With this programme, we have one youth who sits inside the classroom with the teacher and as they’re sitting there, they’ll find a group of seven children.

“We do a lot of baseline assessments, but all fun stuff.

“So a child will sit with the teacher assistant in a little corner and work with them.

“They work with a group of seven at a time who kind of know more or less the same number of letters and they just teach them letter sounds.

“Then the plan is to present the teacher, who is professional, who is trained at what she does, with a full classroom of grade R learners who know all their letter sounds and then watch them do their magic.

“Teachers have got this system called a pace setter for teachers.

“If you’ve got a class of 40, the pace setter tells you that by the term one, you have to be here and term two, this is what you must be teaching; term three this is what you must be teaching.

“So, there’s that pressure to move and then some of the children are falling behind because not everyone moves at the same pace.

“Our intervention says we teach the child at the level they are at — we meet them at their level and so we move at their own pace,” Zulu said.

Masinyusane trains youths in communities and employs them as teacher assistants and librarians at reading centres it has opened up in various schools.

Zulu says this is how it tries to tackle youth unemployment. The youngsters have to live within walking distance of the schools.

Masinyusane now works with 154 schools and 18,276 pupils are benefiting from its programmes.

Zulu said the NPO had partnered with Shine Literacy in another intervention, Word Works, in which the teacher assistants conduct 45-minute one-on-one sessions with a pair of pupils.

“It starts from reading stories, teaching them letter sounds, how to say letter sounds, teaching them how to listen, reading and understanding, which is the main thing that you’re trying to achieve.

“The children will look at a picture and write a story about what they’re seeing in the picture or answer questions according to that.

“Children learn through repetition because unfortunately with a lot of these children, the only teaching that happens is at school.”

Zulu said the goal was to expand Masinyusane into the rural Eastern Cape, to areas where no-one wanted to go to “because that’s where we need it”.

This special report into the state of literacy, a collaborative effort by The Herald, Sowetan and Daily Dispatch, was made possible by the Henry Nxumalo Foundation

The Herald