Opening of the Gungqwana school

Building schools is not the Institute's core business. In the course of our community work in the Gungqwana area in the deep rural Eastern Cape (former Transkei), we were however confronted with a mud-brick community school that had totally collapsed. We responded. Friends of the Institute raised the money; Mr Shepard Mayatula, chairperson of the Education and Training Portfolio Committee in the National Assembly put us in touch with the Adopt-a-School project; the Eastern Cape Education Department co-operated and local folk did the building. On the 8th of October the three-classroom school was officially opened by the MEC for Education in the Eastern cape, Mr Mkhangeli Matomela and Dr Spiwo Xapile, a Board member of the Institute. Despite the progress made by government, there is a backlog of more than 10 000 schools that need to be built. We built the Gangqwane school for less than R200 000.