SIA, a project of ASSET, comprises students who are on the Bursary programme and who have generally been on the Learner Development Programme. The main aim of the project is to plough back to the ASSET community. SIA members help with various tasks including collating and stapling all the material for the LDP Saturday School. They also give assistance with careers at the Winter School.
A special project is the writing of a regular magazine/newsletter directed mainly at learners attending the Saturday School and which aims to bridge the gap between secondary and tertiary experience. Involvement in the magazine provides extremely valuable experience for our bursars especially those studying journalism and communications.
From 2001 to 2005 our bursars produced the magazine “Angle Search”, which was highly successful, but owing to lack of funds and the graduation of many of those involved, the magazine was reconceptualised.
In 2007 SIA members issued their first newsletter which focused on careers. SIA members wrote stories of their own experiences as tertiary students.
One of our Bursars wrote this letter to the Editor of ‘Students in Action’ newsletter:
I am studying towards a BSc degree in Physiotherapy at UCT. Firstly let me congratulate you on your first issue of ‘Students in Action’ newsletter.I have been supported by ASSET since 2004 and am very grateful for the financial support that you have granted me.For the past 4 years I’ve been kind of frustrated, deeply reminiscing on how I can give back to the community, more specifically to the previously disadvantaged schools, so as to make a real difference in their academics and otherwise.With this thought in mind, I tried joining a few student societies here in varsity which are based in townships such as Gugs and Khayelitsha. Frustratingly, they didn’t live up to my expectations. Being a product of such background myself, which is labeled ‘previously disadvantaged’, there were fundamental problems that I experienced while I was a learner and some of them affected me when I came to varsity.I think I could be of great help to assist in curbing such problems. There’s quite a huge range of issues which some might find complex but are really quite simple to address.
Lack of information is a big problem that these learners are facing. This is due to poor career guidance and learners not being actively involved in the career that they wish to pursue.Some don’t even know simple things like obtaining an application form from a tertiary institution; the entrance requirements, or financial assistance that’s there for them. Some fail fundamental subjects such as Maths, Science, Biology and English. So what do they do? They end up sitting at home, getting pregnant, contracting HIV/AIDS, committing crime … and the list goes on. These things perpetuate social problems that we are faced with everyday.
I would like to offer my help in any of your programmes that seek to address the above-mentioned problems.
Wanda Mhobo
Click here to download SIA newsletter Vol.1 (pdf 400KB)
Click here to download SIA newsletter Vol.2 (pdf 120KB)