A group of Crestway High School alumni are appealing for your support through a mentorship programme to help guide and support a group of Grade 12 pupils through their final school year.
Organiser and alumni member, Valda Clarke and others initiated the mentorship programme in 2019 and started helping pupils through stationery and parcel drives but Covid-19 made it difficult for the group.
They’ve now rolled out the second phase of mentorship and those who qualify to become mentors will help Grade 12’s for this academic year.
Ms Clarke, who was at Crestway in the 80s, said it was important for her and others in the group to give back to the school. “We felt it is important for us to support the Crestway community where they need us and the teachers identified the need for a mentorship programme so we are trying to get vetted people on board to assist,” she said.
Ms Clarke added the group of alumni value the education and support they received from teachers in the 80s and the programmes are their way of upholding that ethos.
“We want to help the teachers to work towards excellence and to make sure that our kids have a future out there. We want to support them to create a future where they can be part of the economic system,” she said.
She implored other Crestway alumni to come on board but the mentorship programme is not exclusive to the school’s alumni – anyone can participate after a vetting process.
Principal Cheryl Jacobs said many pupils lack parental support and some have difficult circumstances at home.
“If we can have adults who can fulfil that gap in the learners’ lives it would greatly help them. It’s not financial support, it’s more about walking alongside these learners, monitoring them and checking up on them and to absorb what is happening in our communities and to fill a gap of adult supervision at home because a lot of parents are either absent or too far away from the learners to walk alongside them, especially in their matric year which is such a short year,” said Ms Jacobs.
Two meetings to discuss the mentorship programme will be held at the Retreat School on Saturday March 25 and Saturday April 1, at 9am.
Prospective mentors will have to fill out an application form and have to get police clearance or consent to a police clearance in order to protect the pupils.
The requirements to become a mentor include dedicating a minimum of one hour a week to your mentee, to be committed to the programme for the full 2023 academic year and to get police clearance or consent to police clearance.
For more information contact the school on 021 701 1551 or Valda on 082 464 5015.
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