The future speaks a digital language, and we are determined that no one in our community is left unable to speak it. Every Saturday morning, our computer lab fills not with learners but with the wider neighbourhood — unemployed youth, job-seekers, small traders and curious pensioners — for free, hands-on workshops in the skills the modern world now takes for granted.
The curriculum is gloriously practical. How to switch on a computer and not be afraid of it. How to write and format a CV that gets noticed. How to create an email address, search and apply for jobs online, fill in government forms, and spot a scam. For many who walk in, it is the very first time they have touched a keyboard with purpose.
Over the past two years the programme has trained more than three hundred community members. We have seen a young man land his first warehouse job after learning to apply online in our lab; we have seen a street vendor start taking digital payments and double her customers; we have seen a 60-year-old grandmother proudly video-call her grandchildren in Cape Town for the first time.
It is run entirely by volunteers — our own senior learners among them, who discover that the surest way to master a skill is to teach it. A school, we believe, should be a lighthouse for its whole community. This is one of the ways we keep the light on.