Life Skills Camp 2016 hailed a success, once again

During the six days ended the 3rd of April 2016, leadership and life skills were diligently imparted to 40 learner's ranging from grades 8 to grades 10 by three facilitators and four care givers, including the Transnet Foundation management team. The workshop delivered an impact-full programme where learners were introduced to new life skills, aligned and re-framed their values, goals, engaged in self-assessment processes and formulated new personal development plans.

The group, which dispersed back to their respective schools after an excellence awards gala, also learnt what it means to be a man and for girls, they were taught womanhood including hygiene, sexuality, menstrual cycles, image and dealing with peer pressure. Miss Theresa Vivian Moila, Senior Manager: Education said: “This programme, held annually, serves to empower our young ambassadors with the tools and skills to help them make better, and informed choices in life. We hope that they take what they have learned in the past few days with them into the future.”

The Transnet Leadership and Life Skills Camp is an integral part of the broad Youth Education Development Programme, the Education portfolio’s brainchild targeted at academically gifted students. The main aim of the programme is to promote a culture of academic excellence in South Africa by providing comprehensive educational and psycho-social support to vulnerable youth in strategically targeted areas. The nine year programme targets youth from Grade 8 and the first five-year phase focuses on high school education while the last four years, tertiary studies.

Ms Moila, who has successfully forged strong relationships with the students over the years has been holding the life skills workshops annually. “As the Foundation family, we want to introduce and nourish a solid relationship with our children’s other families. The family has an important role to play in the child’s life and our children are in the middle of the two family trees and we want to create a balance between the two. We are saying to the families that they still have the responsibility for the socialisation of the child each family structure has an important role to play. It is much our role as is theirs, to impart values and be role models for the children’’, Moila says.

Moila continued to say that the young people are part of the partnership and are to play their role wherever they are. When the learners are at school, they are expected to follow the school rules and when at home, house rules must be followed just as Transnet Foundation protocol is observed by the students. At a workshop gathering held at Kingswood College in 2015, Moila reminded the family that we live in a time where children are there to be seen and heard, with full rights, and unfortunately they also have responsibilities. “These children are still part of the family structure, a structure that has rules. The students must not be exempted from family rules just because they are Transnet ambassadors because without these protocols the child is like a dying tree.”