By catering to under-resourced schools in the Grassy Park, Lotus River and Ottery areas, Bottomup - a non-profit organisation in Plumstead, Cape Town - goes far and beyond to provide schools with programmes that nurture belonging and identity.
These programmes, which include a before and after school chess club, teacher and learner support group, and a high school dropout prevention initiative, not only facilitate change in school culture, but have been designed to address school disengagement factors. They also support the needs of educators, learners and parents using critical thinking projects and offering guidance support, especially to those students who are frequently absent from school as a result of problems that the communities they live in face – from gangsterism to drug abuse.
Through these programmes, Bottomup undertakes to understand why the youth of these areas have become disconnected, and where learners, educators and parents can come together and work toward building viable solutions for those who are hoping to make their desire to have a better life a reality.
We caught up with Ashley Visagie, director of Bottomup, to find out more about the organisation, its outreach programmes, what it's trying to tackle, the statistics around the dropout rate and the difference its efforts have been making.
Can you tell us more about Bottomup’s outreach and what it entails? How did Bottomup come to be what it is today?
Bottomup is 10 years old and our approach has shifted significantly from when we started out. In the early days, we were focused mainly on co-curricular and extra-curricular activities aimed at creating opportunities for students that were simply not available or easily accessible in under-resourced schools.
Ashley Visagie, director of Bottomup
After years of taking the typical non-profit approach we recognised that unless attention was put on the structural/macro-level factors that produce disadvantage and educational inequality in the first place, there would be little hope of genuinely transforming schools in a lasting way. Our main focus now is on promoting student agency through critical pedagogy and youth critical action research. It is about helping students to recognise injustice and to exercise the power they have in ways that can meaningfully transform their situation.
What changes have you personally seen in the schools that you assist?
There have been several small victories over the years. The greatest change I think has been the growth of social capital for the schools we have worked with. Through the relationships we have built, schools have seen their own networks expanded. Perhaps an excellent example of this is the construction of the Parkwood Tech Centre at Parkwood Primary School, which was enabled totally through voluntary assistance and crowdfunding and was led by two Stanford University graduates, Morgan Abbett and Adrienne Johnson. Other very practical ways in which we have seen change recently has been through our action research committees which are student-led.
The students identified issues contributing to student disengagement (and ‘drop out’) on their school, one of which included corporal punishment. They then took responsibility to address the school principal on the seriousness of the matter and they have even had an influence on our organisation as we have made plans to host a teacher workshop on corporal punishment, non-violent discipline and restorative justice.
Could you provide us with some statistics on some of the issues you’re trying to address? What is the dropout rate that you are trying to tackle?
The national dropout rate from Grade R-12 is around 45% which is incredibly alarming yet unsurprising given some of the broader issues in education, including policies which do not really favour redistribution of resources in an equitable manner and the fact that many South African students are being asked to do school in a language that is not their home language. Added to the macro-level political issues are the more contextual and community level concerns such as the prevalence of crime and gang violence, lack of access to basic services and other such factors which make schooling and learning a challenge.
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