Alternative education to keep children off the streets

Writer & Photographer: Hardus Botha.

Adjacent to Hoopland Academy in Kleine Street in the Stanford industrial area, iKhaya Youth Centre offers a mentorship programme for children who have dropped out of the mainstream schooling system. The facility is managed by the Fynbos Community Foundation, which was founded by Koos and Joanie Smith after they started the first rural private school, Fynbos Academy, on their farm, Langverwacht in Papiesvlei, a few kilometres outside Stanford.

iKhaya Youth Centre learners are in the process of rebuilding an old ‘Vaaljapie’ tractor which will be displayed in the centre. Left at the back are Koos Smith and Emma du Toit (16), a teenager from France who helped her father, Johan du Toit, Communication Manager of the Fynbos Community Foundation, during the lockdown period in the centre.

Today the Rural Education South Africa (RESAS) branch, an initiative of the Fynbos Community Foundation, oversees Fynbos Academy at Papiesvlei, as well as Hoopland in Stanford and Blouvlei Academy in Wellington. It is a network of independent Christian schools that provide quality education for children in rural areas of the Western Cape. “It has sprung from our passion to invest in the needs of children in our local community by providing them with the quality education they deserve,” says Koos.

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