Curo imparts Skills for Life

Curo has partnered with the Skills for Life foundation to offer essential life skills that stretch young adults’ imaginations, fuels their dreams and deepens personal understanding.

The Skills for Life programme will be run at Fisantekraal High School and Malibu Senior Secondary in Cape Town, offering much-needed life skills to help prepare the young adults at the two schools for success in today’s rapidly changing and globalised world.

Fisantekraal is a disadvantaged community about 6 kilometres from Durbanville, Cape Town. The learners live in the local informal settlement, RDP houses or on neighbouring farms. Drugs, alcohol and unemployment are issues that the community is battling with daily. A similar situation prevails at Malibu High School. The school currently has 45 educators and 11 support staff that serve more than 1500 learners. The learners from economically challenged circumstances must deal with insufficient learning/study space at home, lack of sufficient food and often an unsafe living environment.

The Skills for Life programme relates to all aspects of life; the purpose being to promote the cognitive, social and personal skills of individuals. In this way, the programme helps learners develop a healthy sense of self-esteem and the confidence to shape their life actively, as well as the ability to cope when life gets difficult.

“We would like to see transformation in our industry and are facilitating such change through our Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives,” explains Human Resources Executive, Mandla Dlova. “Education is key to driving this change and, as such, we have already addressed the tertiary education sphere through a Broad Based Black Economic (B-BBEE) Development Trust. Skills for Life allows us to extend our reach into high schools as we establish a holistic view of the next generation of industry professionals”.

The principals at the two designated high schools are optimistic about the programme.

“As a school serving this community we have made giant strides in the last few years and with this partnership we would like to establish ourselves as a school of excellence in the community. We are proud of the work we are doing and with the partnership we would like to give hope to all learners in our community,” affirmed Fisantekraal principal, Mr Leopold Vries.

“If this programme can identify learner needs and assist a few learners to prepare them for tertiary studies, then we would be able to extend the circle of influence of those individuals. We could possibly change the poverty cycle of a few and in the long run assist committed learners to become worthy citizens and in return make a contribution in somebody else’s life,” said Malibu principal, Mr David Links.