One of the biggest challenges facing our country and future is how civil society can assist/ in partnerships with government in developing the human potential young people have of not only leading a meaningful life but also ensuring that they are of service to each other and the country as a whole. Efforts must be made from community level to improve the standard of living of every citizen. Whi
le the primary focus of the MATRIC STUDY PROJECT( MASPRO) upon it’s formation was to afford unsuccessful matriculants an opportunity to improve their results, the imperative to grow entire individual was not lost. And gradually the programme grew to include a life skills component to impart skills development and social responsibility in its learners. It is such contributions that we hope will harness the goodwill of government, industry and the rest of South Africa in improving the life of every child. The Maspro was started in 1993 by a group of students who had been experiencing problems with regard to their education (lack of commitment from both teachers and students and an environment conducive to proper learning), all this lead to a believe that to remedy the situation young people needed to take the fate of their own education into their hands. In 1995 it was registered with the G.D.E and it was during the same year that we invited the then M.E.C of Education Ms Mary Metcalf for motivational talk on our monthly awards presentation. In 1998 the project was able through a donation from De Beers Chairman’s Fund to hold an Evaluation and Strategic Planning Workshop at Ipelegeng Community Centre. This assisted a lot in identifying the many challenges facing young people i.e. that we are expected to make serious life decisions while still young and inexperienced. The challenge was then to develop programs and strategies that are going to ensure that we build capacity among our participants to make the right decisions and have the valuable skills to enable easy access to employment or self employment opportunities. To date our program has a holistic approach to learning to ensure that we grow the whole individual as a foundation for future successes. With a student populace averaging 80 + for the past 20 years we have over 1500 young persons who benefited from successful completion of Call Center Training, Leadership Identification camps, Computer Training and other capacity building workshops. Beneficiations could be far greater with enlarging of pool of participants to young people outside of MASPRO and those who may be prohibited from enrollment due to lack of funds. The Matric Study Project heavily relies on parents contributions to run its operations including it’s core activity matric rewrite and this puts limitations on how much developmental exercises can be included in a calendar year. It is for those reasons that we appeal for funding to extend our reach
