www.thevillagenews.co.za
22 April 2020
5
Hermanus Varsity meets challenges head-on While we wait to hear about the government’s plans to get both school children and tertiary students back on track for the 2020 academic year, ELAINE DAVIE takes a look at how our own Hermanus Varsity is forging ahead despite the lockdown.
I
t’s not often during this time of gloom and doom that one comes across someone who is brimming with hope and enthusiasm. Yet right up there is Delana Finlayson, CEO of the Hermanus Varsity Trust (HVT), not only in terms of the present, but also the past and future. As she sums it up: “It’s been the most incredible journey for all of us so far – the most exciting project I’ve ever been involved with!” Hermanus Varsity was officially launched at its new campus hub, the old Synagogue building on Main Road, on 16 March 2019. By the end of the year over 80% of the first LED (Local Economic Development) students were certificated and HVT was going full steam ahead, with ambitious plans for additional courses in 2020. The only fly in the ointment at that stage was that the owner of the building they were renting had gone into liquidation and the Trustees simply didn’t have the funds to buy it (The Village NEWS 18.12.2019). Nevertheless, the 2020 academic year got off to a flying start in January, with 120 students
enrolled for further LED modules and a new full-time environmental course. At more or less the same time, Delana received a visit from a stranger. He was a South African-born Canadian with a holiday house in Hermanus, who said he had read The Village NEWS story about HVT in December and wanted to learn more about the project.
structures, teaching methodologies and materials, so that the students’ studies would be disrupted as little as possible.
Over coffee Delana told him about the 2018 vision shared by Theo Krynauw, William Ntebe and Prof John de Gruchy – considered piein-the-sky by many at the time – to establish a private tertiary educational institution in Hermanus that would offer certified courses for local youngsters who could not afford to attend universities or TVET colleges further afield. She went on to describe all that they had already achieved in just one year. As they replaced their empty coffee cups, her visitor dropped a bombshell: he would like to buy the old Synagogue building for HVT! Delana almost fell off her chair. “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Could this possibly be true?”
One would have thought that a system which is largely built around online teaching would be ideally adapted to the present circumstances, but it was soon evident that there would be unexpected complications. “It became clear to us,” explains Delana, “that the role our volunteer tutors play in their groups of up to five students each goes way beyond assisting them with their course material. It’s about relationships and motivation and engagement. So we tried to get the tutors to make videos for the students, but they just couldn’t replace face-to-face contact and what’s more, ate up too much data.
Apparently it was, because things happened very quickly after that. An amount of R4.2 million changed hands and the building was theirs. As if this weren’t enough of a miracle, right on top of it, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and his wife, Leah, expressed a wish to demonstrate their endorsement of the HVT project with the establishment of the Desmond and Leah Tutu Scholarship Fund for Excellence.
ABOVE: Students Vuyolwethu Jangile (left) and Zenande Jacob work at computers at the Varsity’s Hub, which they have been unable to use during lockdown. This has forced them to access their course materials on cellphones, with a huge consumption of costly data. CIRCLE: Two of Hermanus Varsity’s visionary founders, Theo Krynauw and Prof John de Gruchy in front of the old Synagogue building which has become the Varsity’s Hub campus. It was recently purchased by a Canadian donor and transferred to HVT’s name.
All this was beyond the wildest dreams of everyone at HVT. A joint celebration of these two extraordinary gifts was planned for March this year, exactly 12 months after the project had been launched. And then along came COVID-19. The still- anonymous Canadian donor could no longer fly out to South Africa, and as with all other events in the country this one, too, had to be postponed. In any case, the Trustees, staff and volunteer tutors at HVT had their hands full trying to reorganise
“The same applied to the workbooks we compiled for them. Most of the students don’t have their own computers; they use the computers at the Hub. So now they were having to download the material on their cellphones and we suddenly understood that when it came to a choice between buying a loaf of bread and an additional data bundle, clearly they would buy the bread. Their reality was very different from ours.” So the first priority had to be to ensure that the students had access to food. They directed them to the Food Bank coordinated by Disaster Management, and many of the tutors on their own initiative supplied members of their groups with food vouchers and data. They also discovered a student resources website which provided free data for students. Of course, there is no such thing as a free lunch, so on a reverse-charge model, it billed the Varsity with
PHOTOS: Johann Kruger the cost of the data, which turned out very expensive. They have therefore initiated discussions with Telkom and Cell C who currently supply some universities and TVET colleges with free data. “One of the most useful lessons we have learnt from this lockdown has been the need to be agile,” says Delana. “So we’ve already completely restructured our operation, so that it is less rigid and more fluid. Something else we realised was that we needed a more strategic marketing plan and we are currently negotiating with one of the top marketing companies in the country to help us with this, but also to accept interns from amongst the young people of Hermanus to teach them technical skills like website design and management, graphic design, brand management and so on. “We have also been given the time to get into more detailed planning for future courses, like the BEd we want to introduce next year, or at the latest in 2022,” adds Delana. In the more immediate future, they are planning an art exhibition with Ubuntu as its theme, which will be restricted to local participants. It was supposed to have been a feature of the FynArts Festival; now they are discussing the possibility of going ahead with it anyway, perhaps in a different form. The arts are important to HVT and discussions are currently underway with Stellenbosch University and Kleinmond’s Handevat music project to collaborate on a music course for teachers. “So all in all,” laughs Delana, “we have made the most of this unexpected gift of time and it has been great to discover that no matter what, we have the adaptability, the resilience and the ability to innovate at short notice. That’s very self-affirming.”
