This week, we are completing our Term 2 interventions. We did our best to address the challenges related to interventions being pushed to after school hours (described in my last post). We managed to deliver 29 Skillz 1.1 interventions in 10 different schools, 23 Generation Skillz interventions in 4 schools, and 2 Skillz Street interventions in 2 different schools. In total, we will have reached about 1,850 graduates this term.
Nevertheless, I have to admit that I’m not as confident about the quality of interventions we delivered during Term 2. In particular, our interventions suffered from conflicts with school exam schedules. Exams usually take place in schools during the final 3-4 weeks of the term. Students often come to school only on the days when they have exams, using the other days to study. When they do come to school, many only stay for the exam and then go home. As a result, the attendance at our sessions drops. We had to put one of our Skillz Street interventions on hold to resume next term given that we were only getting about half of our participants each session.
Exams do not take place every term, so I hope our site will manage to work around these challenges going forward. Apparently, the GRS office outside of Cape Town put all their interventions on hold as soon as exams began, which might be a necessary solution going forward.
Once schools finish on June 22nd, students have a three week break. We will be running holiday camps during the first week and will then have two weeks to plan our next interventions and run trainings with our coaches/staff. Term 3 begins July 16th.
Photo above: CPC Annie's team of coaches
