Highlights form our 2018 Annual Report

For Siyakwazi, 2018 was a year of many changes and accelerated growth. The introduction of new systems and tools assisted greatly in consolidating the work that we do. It is heart-warming that we have so many individuals and organisations supporting and getting behind what we do.

Although we still operate our three main programmes, schools, ECD and NCB, as part of our internal training and management we have seen two significant strategies develop which we apply to these programmes namely, Inclusion and School Readiness. Below are some highlights from our annual report, we invite you to download the full Annual Report through the link at the bottom of the page.

Early Identification: Implementing our Red Flag Tool

In February 2018 we started implementing a new, standardised tool, called the red flag early identification tool to support us being able to screen all children in Grade R, Grade 1 and in ECD centres from the age of 2 years to 5 years. This screening tool has 9 different, simple activities targeted to measure success in all the different areas of a young child’s development.

1300 children aged 2-7 years were screened through our red flag assessment tool in 2018

Intervention: Our Catch-up Programme

Siyakwazi’s catch-up programme has been a joint resource development project facilitated by Robyn of Treasures for Thematic Teaching. The catch-up programme is a series of learning resources used by our schools’ team to support the children in the 4 Primary Schools who were identified by our red flag tool. The programme is linked to CAPS and follows themes incorporating all areas of learning to ensure the development of the whole child. The aim of the tool is to promote school readiness to allow for increased development and a smooth transition in the child’s schooling career.

Teacher feedback: “There is a great improvement in the performance of children who are ‘behind’. I now know the weak point of each and every learner in my class well and their strengths as individuals”.

Inclusion in our Programmes

67 children with disabilities were supported by inclusive learning practises in both the ECD & Schools programme.

20 children with severe disabilities were supported through our non-centre based programme.

Grace Hughes assisted us in helping provide termly support to children and parents in our NCB programme. Each child on the programme has a specific therapy programme designed for them which is implemented by parents/ caregivers and the Siyasizas.

Creating Awareness

We have loved seeing the individual growth of all the Siyasizas and are especially proud of the awareness drives that they have passionately run and affected many people in the KwaNzimakwe community. Challenging stigma of disability in the community to one of acceptance and a belief that all children can learn, has always been our focus. Through our awareness drives this belief is starting to permeate throughout the community influencing all who hear and see about what we do. We have also seen this in our regular visits and mentoring at schools and ECD centres and teachers are demonstrating their understanding of inclusion.

A total of 727 parents, teachers and community members were reached through our awareness drives

We’ve also received some great feedback from parents about working with Siyakwazi which is included on page 6 of our Annual Report.

Download Siyakwazi Annual report 2018