Like a whirlwind, the likes of which has never been seen in this lifetime and bringing with it feelings of hopelessness and fear, Covid-19 has affected all aspects of life – restraining movement, temporarily shutting down industries, and closing down educational institutions. 

Educational institutions, both higher education and schools, had to find unique and untried ways to continue teaching and learning.  Some universities have followed suit by offering online lessons and schools.  International collaborations in higher education have quickly adapted to Zoom and Microsoft Teams to bring collaborators together to take stock of the situation and find ways to keep moving their projects along.  One such project is iKudu, supported through an Erasmus+ Cooperation grant, where a collaboration of ten universities – five from Europe and five from South Africa – are pioneering approaches in setting up COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) as part of internationalised and decolonised curricula for the future.  The pandemic proved the importance of such teaching and learning methods.  

Below, I share some of my past experiences in education practices which I bring to iKudu. These have been shaped based on an understanding of local educational need through my involvement with IMPALA, and in using a social entrepreneurship model I am invested in. I also share a short case study example about SHINE, a small and fairly new non-profit organisation in Cape Town, South Africa, that I helped to set up. Having heard about online learning from iKudu, SHINE is enthused to implement similar collaborative online approaches to teaching as a way to continue assisting learners in their final years of school. 

1. The need

South Africa is beset with a very unequal education system, which means that there are schools with abundant resources that can provide education of a very high quality, alongside the majority of schools – mostly situated in townships and villages – which are lagging behind in providing quality.  They are dragged down by resource deficiency, teacher apathy, and a general lack of motivation.  In effect, it means that very few learners from such schools can do well in the final examinations and gain access to higher education institutions.  

2. My experiences in practice and the model

Social Entrepreneurship (SE), as a practice, tries to ameliorate a social challenge by finding unique funding models that can sustain a service without ongoing financial infusion after the initial capital is invested.  It also strives to pay back the capital over a few years.  This practice is referred to as a social business, as propagated by Mohammad Yunus of Grameen Bank fame. 

I was unwittingly introduced to social entrepreneurship without consciously trying to be one.  There are many who engage with social development; maybe it is my accounting background that helped me to ensure that the activities I engaged in were financially sustainable as well.   I was first introduced to social development when working in rural South Africa as a teacher in a village school where there was no electricity or water supply and not even a proper school building. The school had no classrooms, so we taught in the shade of the trees.  The village would need some basic amenities, I thought to myself.  After a few months of getting acquainted with the norms that governed the village and gaining the trust of the people, I rolled up my sleeves and started working to do whatever I could to ease their lives.  The first project I undertook was to build classrooms.  All I asked from donors was to extend a line of credit in the local building store, and a hundred soccer balls.  One of the donors, the German Embassy, provided the same.  We purchased the cement and sand and built a well to store water.  The learners were encouraged to bring a tin of water to fill the well, and a few stones that was piled in a corner to build the foundation of the school.  The learners were encouraged to make the bricks using a manual machine.  For every hundred bricks made, a football would be the reward to the team.  Soon, there were enough bricks to start building, the well was full, and there were enough stones to build the foundation. A group of parents who were skilled in building volunteered to build the school, and within three months we had enough classrooms to accommodate the 800 learners.  

The completion of this project was an encouragement to do more. In due course, successful negotiations with corporates led to the village having telephones, electricity, water supply, and the development of some small businesses as a job creation initiative.  All these projects had financial sustainability built into it. 

Motivated to learn more about poverty and the reasons behind it, and the theories underpinning development, I undertook a journey to Stellenbosch University to study for an MPhil in the Philosophy of Development, which opened my mind and let the first light of wisdom enter a closed space. My dissertation was about all my experiences in the village; when submitted, three of the professors flew into town and requested that I take them to the village and show them the projects that were mentioned. That evening, over dinner, the professors verbally conferred a master’s degree on me.   

In 1994, after ten years of working in the village, and South Africa having held its first democratic election, I was offered the job of Director – which I accepted – at the previously whites-only Wits Rural Facility of the University of the Witwatersrand. At the time, I did not realise that it was the beginning of my training, getting me ready to work with many universities. 

The Wits management had decided to give the facility three years to be turned around financially or face closure. This information was not provided to me before taking up the post.  Through innovative and sometimes daring initiatives and thinking completely out of the box, the organisation was stabilised within six months and placed on a path of complete financial self-sufficiency. I am told that it still has its doors open and is continuing to provide a large number of students the opportunity to learn.  

Further opportunities would lead me to the University of Virginia – my first trip to America – where I worked with a colleague from Wits to set up a short-term study-abroad programme, where students would come to the facility and learn about Africa.  This study-abroad programme would stand me in good stead when I developed study-abroad programmes for a further 22 partner universities from America and Europe at the University of Cape Town.  

In 2007, identifying the dire need to provide the necessary support to learners from township and rural schools to access higher education, I implemented a programme at the University of Cape Town. The name SHINE was chosen to indicate the possibilities that lie ahead for pupils to shine.  This initiative assisted learners from previously disadvantaged communities by providing extra tuition in Mathematics and Science.  As a result, hundreds of learners who attended this programme were able to gain admittance to universities. The programme followed three principles:  maintain high quality; recruit the best teachers; and keep the learners focused.  Keeping to the social entrepreneurship model, the programme was later offered to middle-class parents who could afford and were willing to pay. As a result, the programme became financially fully self-sustainable within a few years by using the fees collected from middle-class learners to subsidise those who could not afford to pay.  Unfortunately, this programme was closed down in 2019.  

4. Regrouping to SHINE ACADEMIA  https://oshun-sa.co.za/

Social entrepreneurs do not give up easily in the face of adversity.  I had to reconvene and convince the previous supporters of the value of this programme; we regrouped in January 2020 and relaunched the programme, which is based at Groote Schuur High School.  The opening capital was donated by a philanthropist; learners from previously disadvantaged schools and fee-paying students from affluent schools signed up – again, following the model for financial sustainability.  Two months into the programme, COVID-19 struck, and life came to a standstill.  

Learning how to go online

The personnel at SHINE were now in a dilemma as to how to continue their teaching activities. Having very little knowledge and practise of doing work online – except for email, WhatsApp, and Messenger – there was hesitation and consternation about trying an online solution.  

I was exposed to thinking around online interaction and am participating in some online meetings as part of iKudu, coordinated by the University of the Free State. As the lockdown came into effect across the world, the only means to carry on with the project was through online interaction.  Thus, Zoom was introduced as a platform to do so.  

Subsequently, the teachers and learners of the SHINE programme have also been trained in the use of online tools such as Zoom and Microsoft Office.  Within a week, teachers and learners adapted to the new teaching methodology, and lessons are offered regularly. The experience of setting up the above online programme with SHINE provided me with a practical view of what it takes to plan and set up online collaborative teaching and learning across different educational settings.  We have already learnt the following:

• The lack of knowledge, practise, and the hesitation to use online technology as a teaching medium should be addressed.  Someone familiar with the medium should guide teachers and learners as they learn to navigate the various nuances of online learning. 
• Learners from disadvantaged backgrounds may not have the financial means to purchase data, for example. Accessibility issues need to be overcome for them to continue to log on for their lessons.  This challenge will remain as long as South Africa has a financially skewed society.
• Online programmes need careful, detailed planning and logistical support.  A timetable should be created to divide the day between different teachers, and learners studying different subjects.  Reminders are needed to keep pupils to the times of the classes.  Attendance registers are needed to track absenteeism and to better understand reasons for any non-engagement.  As follow-up, SHINE personnel call the learners / parents after each session to find and resolve the reasons for non-attendance.