News from the trustees
WEBINAR NOTICE: We are delighted to announce the first of our webinars, to be held on MONDAY 6TH APRIL AT 7.30PM. We are planning a session of upto 1 hour for our supporters who want to understand more about the activities of the charity and who might wish to get more involved as volunteers. Please let us know if you would like to participate in the webinar (email baseduk@gmail.com).
The new year started with the submission of our completed Annual Return to the Charity Commission, and you can read BASED UK's submitted financial reports and other relevant governance issues here. We are very grateful to our volunteer Independent Examiner who has provided a free check for our accounts as part of the submission process to the Charity Commission over the past few years. Our volunteer is now retiring from this service and the trustees would be very pleased to hear from professionals with a finance background who can take over this ‘light touch’ scrutiny ... please check here for background about the role and contact the Treasurer (helena.hastie@gmail.com) for further details.
During February, the trustees engaged in a consultative planning process to investigate ways to raise the profile of the charity further and diversify income sources. We will let you know the outcome from these sessions when they come closer to fruition.
Regarding the wider UK policy context for our work, the Government is currently reviewing the structuring of its official development assistance. Irrespective of the political currents potentially affecting the flow and direction of official development assistance over the coming years, BASED UK remains committed to its enduring vision: BASED-UK exists to foster and support social and economic development learning and action as part of the Baha'i International Community's commitment to building a more unified, equitable and ever-advancing global civilisation...
Finance updates
Over the past quarter, we have submitted 5 small grant applications totalling some £15,000 to UK grant-making Trusts to support the Community Schools Programme in eSwatini, the smallest of our partner programmes by budget size. Some of these Trusts are ones to which we have previously submitted successful applications, for instance the Southall Trust. Both the Early Childhood Development Programme of the Mongolian Development Centre and the Community Banking Programme of Bayan Association in Honduras are receiving funding to cover their current budgetary needs.
Community Schools Programme, eSwatini update
We are pleased to include below an update from members of the Setsembiso Sebunye Foundation Board, Mangaliso Dlamini and Debbie Dadgar (first left in photo) and the Community Schools Programme Coordinator Charity Tsela (third from left in photo). Also in the photo are Nakhjavan Tanyi (Secretariat for the promotion of community schools in Africa), Helena Hastie (BASED UK trustee & Treasurer) and Mhlatane community school teacher, Nonhlanhla Hlophe (far right).
Strength of teachers in collaboration:
Setsembiso Sebunye teachers have constantly shown collaboration among themselves, we have seen them working together in their zone meetings, meeting up and preparing their schemes of work together.
We have also seen them putting more efforts in during our researching on the drafting of our community school’s committee training materials. They have carried out some research in their communities. During their research five guidelines were used, they were as follows: Identifying concerns, Explore identified concerns, Decision making, Taking action, Reflect on action/evaluation.
Also during the preparations of the children’s graduations, continuous support is being demonstrated by teachers by organizing themselves on how they can help each other with the preparations for this day, helping each other with some of the activities that the children will perform on this special day.
Community Support:
In December 2019 we had a chance to attend some of the community schools’ graduations. It was so wonderful to see community members and other stakeholders such local primary school teachers, spokespersons for the community. Such support gives hope to the teachers that they are not alone in this service but the whole community takes it serious too.
In the picture below on the left Mr. Mira Maseko, Make Malambe, Gogo Ngwenya and Make Masuku. These are the members of the community (school committee) who have worked very hard with the teacher to see that the school functions well and try to overcome some of the challenges the school is facing.
Training:
Setsembiso Sebunye Foundation is continuing with the training of teachers. In 2019 we submitted that we are going to train 40 teachers and open 5 schools in the year 2019-2020. We are very happy to share that Setsembiso Sebunye Foundation was able to train 24 teachers attending initial training.
At level 1, there were 24 newly trained teachers. At level 2, 12 teachers were trained coming from existing schools and at level 3, 7 teachers were trained coming from existing schools. In all the 25 schools were able to maintain 485 children.
Amazing Grace Preschool:
This community school started in 2019, using a church structure while we were working to find a place for the school. Before the end of the year 2019 one of the community members donated a piece of land where we can put a structure for the children to use as a classroom, while they were planning to build a permanent structure. This pre-school has moved from the church structure to their new site during 2020.This school has got 9 children so far but we are hopeful the number will grow.
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