Staff development:
The Trust employs 89 employees, of which four are sponsored by 27four, and thirteen are sponsored by Motus Corporation (YES) with the mandate to support partner schools to improve literacy. There are several activities that we use to support the school curriculum. The programs include the reading programme the library assistant conducts in the library, Book Club and quizzes, General Knowledge quizzes, Dictionary quizzes, Spelling Tests and Spelling Bees, Board games, and Maths and Science quizzes. Since we employ youth, some did not have an opportunity to further their education after completing their Matric. The Trust organises on-site training to help them develop the necessary skills to support learners.
How to conduct Book Club meetings and shared reading:
Every library assistant deployed in schools is responsible for teaching reading from grade 1 to grade 4. Each class comes to the library twice a week, making it one hour a week. The library assistant needs to learn how to teach reading. The Trust buy readers and other learning materials from different distributors; one of them is Shuter and Shooter, who has committed to training our staff on different teaching skills. This year the staff was trained to conduct Book clubs and how to do shared reading.
Computer skills:
At the end of each day, the library assistants have to compile a report of all the activities that took place in the library and send it to the management every Friday. For them to do this, they need to have computer skills. So we organised a computer skills training conducted by Microsoft. It was a four days training which included Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Outlook. All newly appointed staff members attended and received certificates.
First Aid training:
When working with young children, one cannot be careful enough to avoid all incidents that may lead to injuries. The trust management team saw a need for all staff members to get training on dealing with minor injuries that may occur when learners are in our staff care. The training was a success; all staff members wrote an assessment and practical presentation on CPR and dressing different wounds.
We are proud to say that our work will be much easier after all these training and workshops; we can now confidently monitor knowing that people have received the necessary training. The reports come in on time, book club meetings are now fun, and we hope they will also administer first Aid where needed.
On behalf of the Trust’s management team, I thank you for the support and the chance you gave to these young people working for the Trust. They appreciate all the skills they got and the impact they are making in different schools.