Our South Africa partner, Kate from Good Work Foundation, was recently in the UK, speaking at a conference and catching up with family and friends. This was too good an opportunity to miss – a chance to meet up with one of our local partners without having to get on a plane! So we chose a point not too difficult for any of us to reach by train or road and Sallie and I met Kate for a late breakfast. Kate’s sister Angie who handles all the administration for the volunteer programme for GWF was able to join us too.

We also had an important job to do. You may recall that in our last newsletter we asked if anyone had the skills to volunteer with Good Work Foundation to help them teach coding or robotics. Soon after we published that article we were approached by Ben. Ben had a volunteer placement arranged in 2020 – he was going to work alongside local teachers to teach coding at another project we support elsewhere in Africa when Covid intervened – Ben was actually en route when he had to turn back as the borders closed. In his suitcase he had several Raspberry Pi computers with associated software and teaching materials, and they have been sitting on his shelves at home ever since. For family reasons Ben is no longer able to travel to volunteer but he very kindly offered these materials to Good Work Foundation to use in their Open Learning Programme with children in Hazyview in South Africa – if we could find a way to get the computers there. Our meeting with Kate was the ideal opportunity. Ben doesn’t live close enough to our meeting point to present the computers himself, but he sent them to me and Sallie and I were delighted to present them to Kate on his behalf.

Kate says ‘The opportunity to use these raspberry pi kits for learning will open up a whole new wonder-filled world of learning and coding for our students. Thank you Ben – this is an amazing donation!’

To learn more about volunteering with Good Work Foundation take a look here