Save what you can sell?

This is Mfanelo, one of our interns, having some fun with the chalk board we were using for mug shots a few minutes beforehand. It's safe to say that he's our entertainer in the Gap Year program.

Today a group of us went back to Zisukhanyo, where I'd first started back in June, to help out with a new after school program. The results of this year's matric exams came out on Friday, and a large majority of Grade 12 learners in the townships where we work failed their exams, which will prevent them from getting decent jobs or exploring any sort of tertiary education.

Scary as it sounds, because the principals of these schools are awarded money and teachers based on their pass percentages, two of the schools held meetings yesterday with their Grade 12's and parents encouraging hundreds of learners to simply drop out and give up on the second half of their senior year (I'm not exaggerating a bit - I actually listened to the principal of Phillipi High explain that he was doing everything he could to convince all his underachieving learners to drop out). Zisukhanyo, on the other hand, immediately began a compulsory three-hour after school program for all of their Grade 12's, and we will be supporting their efforts a few days a week from now on. These classes are comparatively huge for me - almost forty students yesterday - but the atmosphere is good. Grade 12's do have an opportunity to take the "Alternative Assessment Test" in a few months, so that knowledge combined with the culling of the weak down the road has them sitting up straight and hanging on every word.