OUR HISTORY

 

Phenduka is the Zulu word for "turnaround"

Background information and project description.

Since the year 2000, The Phenduka Literacy and Maths Project has been active in Alexandra , one of the poorest townships of South Africa. The project is officially registered as an NGO in 2001, and is recognized as making a contribution to literacy upliftment by the Gauteng Department of Education.

Despite the multitude of NGO projects in South Africa, there is a lack of good educational systems. Children and young boys and girls attend under very trying circumstances schools that lack teaching quality, equipment and infrastructure.
Result: what they learn there is totally insufficient.

The purpose of the programme is to help improve the teaching and learning of reading, writing and basic mathematics skills in disadvantaged primary schools. Various national and international evaluations of literacy and numeracy levels in South African schools suggest that a large number of learners are at inadequate reading and numeracy levels. Yet reading skills form the basis of almost all learning. To help children develop their skills, the programme uses the "balanced approach" to literacy and numeracy learning.

 

When Alison Beynon on completed her MA in second language education at Wits University. She realised that the research in education she had done was applicable to the situation in South Africa. She was moved by the plight of the large number of children dropping out of schooling due to lack of literacy grounding. She designed the DETOUR programme and developed materials for the use in the programme. In response to requests from schools we served in 2014 we developed a mathematics remedial programme to add to the literacy remediation.

 

Our purpose is to catch children with low literacy and numeracy skills before they drop out, give them the necessary skills to make good use of their schooling and proceed to matric. Our programme also builds self-esteem, confidence and a belief in their future. The basis of our success is our very child-centred, progressive methodology that moves from oracy into literacy, and gets children excited about reading. In numeracy it is from drilling on basic maths facts and number sense to develop mathematical and procedural fluency and get children interested in mathematics. So we provide a very necessary complement and alternative to school learning that gives children a “last chance”. Once in high school there are no other avenues for them to catch-up.

 

 

Where we are today

Over the years we have helped over 10 000 children to develop reading skills.