Five of the De la Bat students who received support from GYFT in 2016.
Ricardo Brandon Govender tries on school shoes, sponsored by GYFT.
Zanele Mbanjwa receives her GYFT-sponsored school gear.
Bright scholars receive much-needed funds to help them achieve success.
In its second year of existence, GENRIC Youth Foundation Trust (GYFT) has significantly expanded the number of youths it sponsors to help them achieve new academic heights by dedicating money to De la Bat School for the hearing impaired in Western Cape.
The Trust, which was established in 2014 by short-term niche insurer GENRIC Insurance Company Ltd as part of its social upliftment responsibility, gave financial assistance to 10 pupils at the Worcester-based De la Bat School in 2016, in addition to the two students it was already backing since 2015.
“We received quite a number of applications from the De la Bat School for assistance in 2016,” explains Katrina Dass-Naidoo, a trustee of the foundation. “This led us to believe that there is great need. We were very keen to get involved with the school, since we believe in the cause as a very worthy one. These children need extra care, and the financial burden that goes with this, means that some of these students and their parents have great needs indeed.”
The Trust initially sponsored five students at the school, but added five more students there during the course of the year to its list of beneficiaries, contributing a total of R100,000 to the school in 2016 in the form of school and boarding fees for these 10 students.
“We have developed an excellent working relationship with the school, its principal and staff,” Dass-Naidoo says, adding that GYFT is set to continue and expand its activities at the school.
Not exclusive
The Trust continued to give support for the second year running to its first two beneficiaries: Zanele Mbanjwa from Alexandra High School in Pietermaritzburg; and Ricardo Brandon Govender in Dinwiddie High School in Gauteng.
The beneficiaries, who are handpicked by GYFT, are bright young adults from disadvantaged backgrounds who have excelled in their studies despite having little or no financial means. GYFT supports these students financially and vocationally to give them the opportunity to excel and realise their potential without the worries that arise from financial constraints.
GYFT caters according to each beneficiary’s needs.
The Trust will select its next wave of beneficiaries for the 2017 GYFT Education and Skills Development by the end of the first quarter, according to the minimum criteria set by the Trustees. Potential candidates are to apply to GYFT to be taken into consideration.
We consider each and every application we receive,” Dass- Naidoo explains. “We are an inclusive organisation.”
Lessons learned
The second year in GYFT’s short life has been a resounding success, says Dass-Naidoo, but not without a series of challenges and valuable lessons learned.
“We’re still in our infancy, and although we have made great strides in our organisation in how we organise ourselves, the process of selection, and so forth, we’ve also had an abundance of lessons we had to learn,” she recounts.
The biggest challenge of the past year has been to get an accurate picture of each beneficiary’s needs. Since the Trust provides according to a beneficiary’s unique needs, accurate and open communication with each beneficiary is vital in order to gauge each one’s exact needs.
“If a beneficiary doesn’t tell us, ‘I need a new school case,’ we cannot provide him or her with a new school case. That has been the most frustrating aspect of the past year,” Dass-Naidoo says.
Another tough part of the year was when the Trust had to evaluate the performance of the students supported.
“Support is reconsidered on a yearly application on the condition that the students continue to excel academically,” she says. This means that the Trust has no choice but to terminate its support where students’ academic excellence falters, she explains.
“This is probably the hardest thing for us to do, but if our beneficiaries do not maintain their
academic performance, we cannot continue to support them. This is the mandate according to which we operate, and there are other bright young adults who come before us that are in just as much need, but who can maintain their academic standard,” Dass-Naidoo adds.
More of the same
The Trust plans to expand its offering to its young beneficiaries by giving not only financial support, but also vocational exposure, where young adults can have more hands-on training in various workplaces to experience what different career options entail.
“We had great plans for more of the vocational aspects of our mandate in the past year, but we took on De la Bat School’s students, which turned out to be quite enough to keep ourselves busy with,” says Dass-Naidoo. “Our ambitions to expand our programme remain on the cards, but we just have to postpone it until we have the capacity to manage that as well.”
In the coming year, GYFT plans to continue evaluating its financial support to De la Bat School, and to expand that to other students within the school. “We are very pleased with our progress, and plan to do more of the same – widen our support to the school and other beneficiaries in acccordance with the Trust’s procedures,” she says.
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