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Two Oceans Aquarium Visit
Report from Luqmann Mathee, Gr 9
On Thursday, 3 April, we visited the Two Oceans Aquarium. Soon after we arrived, we were greeted by our host, Khonzani. He was extremely friendly and answered many of our questions.
The first topic he spoke about was ecosystems, of which he focused on the kelp forest. He showed us a tank which contained such an ecosystem. He told us that this tank was one of three worldwide that could support the kelp forest, most aquariums use plastic kelp rather than live.
We moved to the classroom where Khonzani described sea urchins, starfish and anemones, telling us how they eat. We then had a break and we were able to view aquarium exhibits.
Our second session was on data collection. We had pretend we were working for the department of fisheries. We needed to take stats for fish that had been caught. We had to measure their size and length. We also had to check their gender by dissecting part of their bodies. (One student nearly passed out at this point and may never eat fish again!)
The excursion was quite fun and I really enjoyed the dissecting of fish. |
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WITS University's Targeted Talent Program
We are excited that our very own Nikita Heneke was chosen for the prestigious WITS holiday program for brilliant learners. Nikita applied for the program at the end of Gr 9. The program runs through Gr 10-12 offering holiday tuition in maths and science with a special focus on physics as well as curriculum extension that exposes them to careers that they might not have considered. Nikita will be flown to Johannesburg three times/ year for contact sessions. All expenses are paid and the package is valued at R150 000!!! Well done Nikita. |
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So You Want to Be a Doctor?
You might be drawn to medicine if you are people oriented and love science. You might also be drawn to it because the pay is great and it is a prestigious career. The sad reality is that there are many people-loving, science-loving teens out there and most of them don't get to be doctors. So what does it take, and what can you do if you don't have what it takes? Read More |
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Money Matters
I have recently realised that some of our families don't really know where our money comes from. I want to clear this up and explain what our families can do to help us keep our bank account healthy.
SAILI is a charity. We provide a service to the community - we identify talented students with low financial resources and place them in good schools that they otherwise would not have had access to. Whilst we do have a small amount of money of our own, we generally rely on donations from other organisations to pay for the school expenses of our scholarship students. The other donors may include individuals, charitable funds, other governments and corporates however, at the moment all our donors are corporates.
A corporate donor is a company that wants to contribute to the community by supporting a charity. Often they are interested in SAILI because they are hoping that more maths and science passes at high school will lead to more young people training in scarce skills, such as the ones their company works in - engineering and finance would be examples. In exchange they expect that we will use their money wisely, getting the best value possible for the amount they give us and that we will report on this regularly.
The main way that we report to our donors is by sending them on youtr school reports. When you hand your report in late, our donor report goes out late. The main reason why donors stop giving money to charities is because of poor communication. So if your report is late, you don't just put your funding at risk, you put at risk EVERYONE who is funded by the same donor as you.
For this reason, there is now ZERO TOLERANCE for late reports. If you have any reason for being late with your report, please let me know or your contract with SAILI will be at risk. |
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