Missio Dei School
Quality education remains a challenge in rural communities. Children are faced with numerous hardships including no transport to school and sub-standard levels of education. Language remains an issue as children in rural areas are less exposed to different languages. Once they are behind in education a snow ball effect causes them to be behind in securing employment which subsequently causes numerous social problems that our country faces everyday.
In 2012 we started off with a preprimary class and a grade R class for the local children. Our aim was to lift the standard of education and grow the school as the children move on to the next standard.
We soon realized that the task at hand was one of mammoth proportions. A shed on one of the farms was allocated to develop the school as it was strategically placed in the center of our community. Several volunteers stepped in and provided assistance at all levels: financially, providing expertise and volunteering to do the work. What started off in a one room classroom grew into a fully equipped school. Today we are humbled to say that we have 160 children enrolled at the school in the nursery school, gr R, gr 1- gr 7. Our personnel include 10 full-time teachers and one administrative manager.
Missio Dei Education Remedial Classes (MDE)
After our school on the farm was fully functional we realized that we need to do more to help solve the educational challenge we face in South Africa. Statistics in our country show that only 50% of gr 1 learners make it to gr 12. An international study for literacy (PIRLS) was done in 2021 indicating that 81% of gr 4 learners in South Africa cannot read with understanding. South Africa clearly has great shortfalls regarding foundation phase education. If we do nothing about this, it can only lead to more instability in the future.
MDE started with remedial classes at schools in 2015 to supply gr 3 learners with support in Mathematics and reading.
Our strategy:
- We train people from the community around the school to serve as tutors to 3 learners at the school.
- Schools identify struggling learners that can benefit from our program.
- We test the learners and arrange them in small groups according to their level of understanding.
- Schools allocate classrooms to us for the purpose of our remedial program.
- We supply remedial education in Mathematics and Reading to gr 3 learners four days per week.
- We appoint qualified teachers to train all our tutors on a weekly basis and visit classes daily to ensure quality education for the learners in our program.
- We test learners frequently to measure progress.
- We do daily discipleship with the learners to guide them in Godly character and responsible stewardship.
Benefits of this strategy:
- It is cost effective because we use the facilities of existing schools and train our own tutors. We can reach many learners for a fraction of the cost compared to a normal school.
- We create income and skills training for many people around schools in rural areas.
- We work with learners in small groups and can give more individual attention, ensuring progress.
With the help of businesses and other individuals we were able to replicate this model to 26 other schools in the country. We reach more than a 1700 learners on a daily basis.
Missio Dei Health Care Centre
The Missio Dei Health Care Centre is situated on one of our farms close to the town of Ficksburg. It was established in 2010 when Patricia Molipa heard of MD Foundation and came looking for help. Caring for terminally ill people in an abandoned dilapidated nursery school in the township she had a heart for her community and was battling to make ends meet caring for everyone from her own pocket. Initially our involvement was to supply food and assistance where we could. We soon realized that the community was suffering without proper support. There was no institution that families could turn to for assistance with terminally ill people.
During January 2011 one of the houses on a MD farm was developed into a fully operational health care centre with hospital standard rooms. Under Praticia’s management the center has gone from strength to strength. The focus of the center is especially to create awareness on HIV and care for critically ill HIV positive patients. It can accommodate 14 patients. 17 Full time caregivers are employed at the center.
Today the center is run by Alta Badenhorst and it continues to impact more and more people from our community.
Our challenge remains to fund the growth of the health care center, to accommodate more patients and to employ more medical staff.
Missio Dei Clinic
On one of our farms named Stolberg we renovated a building to serve as a clinic for our community. We just appointed a nurse by the name of sr. Phore and she helps us to give medical care to the people in our community.
We have a good relationship with the government clinic services in our area and they agreed to support us with some of the needed medicine to care for the people in our community, they supply us with chronic and acute medication. We supply the building and the nurse.
