Education on Wheels is the initiative of the Western Cape based company Cape Skills Development Centre, which was first established in 2017 to address a large number of children dropping out or not attending school in the Western Cape. The bus will be Cape Skills Development Centre’s signature project as it brings education to people from the previously disadvantaged communities living in remote areas with no access to school or training facilities.
Education on Wheels (EOW) is an integrated approach towards improving the quality of education for people from the disadvantaged and rural communities within the Western Cape. It seeks to ensure education for all leading to their overall development. Education on Wheels is an important program at the Cape Skills Development Centre. The bus will be re-modeled to become a mobile classroom equipped with basic supplies and a small media centre including computers, LCD projector and white screen for educational, audio-visual learning. Education on Wheels was built to reach out specifically to people living in the rural areas within the Western Cape. In these areas, the people have no means of accessing training facilities, unlike the suburbs where the Cape Skills Development Centre is able to set up learning centres.
Twice a month, the bus will visit two to three locations where facilitators will offer three-hour classes for students. To encourage literacy in communities living on the outskirts of the city, Education on Wheels becomes a mobile reading room in the evenings. It parks in an area for two hours, giving people access to a variety of books to read. The project will be implemented in the Western Cape by Cape Skills Development Centre. The key component of the project is a bus designed as a mobile classroom to provide alternate educational facilities to people from the disadvantaged communities and rural areas in the Western Cape. Efforts are being made to start this project at the beginning of the next financial year. Other key components of the project include a community based educational program, school partnership program and working with adolescent children from the community.
The Cape Skills Development Centre is a registered company, which main objectives are to educate, uplift and empower the disadvantaged and rural communities in the Western Cape, South Africa.
Within the same context, we wish to open a support centre for the Western Cape which will offer services such as basic education, vocational training, technical, administrative and developmental support to the creation of small local businesses, microcredits, as well as workshops on gender issues, basic health awareness and the importance of gender equality within households, communities and society as a whole.
Education and Socio-Economic Advancement are basic human rights in our country; however, in the Western Cape, hundreds of students are still denied these rights, and/or do not have the means to achieve it. Gender disparities are widespread issues and have devastating impacts on these people’s lives. Education and further empowerment can address these concerns.
