Frequently Asked Questions

We have a strong team on site that has set itself the firm goal of continuing to run the organisation in the spirit of the founder:

We want to continue to offer a good education to the poor and disadvantaged in our society and a safe home for the children in our children’s home.

At the same time, we want to pass on values that are beneficial to our society, such as honesty, hard work and responsibility for others, and exemplify these values in our own lives. Education alone is not enough to teach these. Where violence and abuse, drug addiction and theft are regarded as normal in everyday life, alternative examples are needed to create truly lasting change.

Further, our educational facilities are open to everyone who would like to become part of the Hope and Light family.

Our team of directors, management, educators and support staff all make enormous personal commitments to serve our communities and the children in our care.

1. When did school officially open?
   The school opened with the first class in 2010 in Sir Lowry’s Pass. The current school building was built in 2017. In 2022, 75% of our first matric class of 20 learners graduated.
2. How many children or young people and of what age have received schooling since the school opened?
   Around 400 children between the ages of 5 and 18 receive a school education every year. The first matric class finished in 2022. In addition, 110 children are being prepared for school life in our kindergarten. Of course, many children come and go, and we must refer some to special schools because we cannot give them the support they need.
3. How many children are attending the school in the current school year? How big are the classes?
   We currently have 389 children. The classes are between 20 and 32 children per class.
4. How do you ensure that the best use is made of your resources at the school? What challenges do you face and how do you respond to them?
   Our grade 1 class for 2024 has a long waiting list. There are still places available in the higher grades and we expect a lot of restructuring in 2024. We cannot do justice to some children and our state support is unfortunately dependent on good results from our graduating class. Therefore, we cannot drag children, who are overwhelmed academically, through grade 12 and must start a selection process earlier, which will bring some instability over the next few years. The first step was training sessions with the teachers, who knew nothing about the resources available from the Department of Education, on how to identify and address challenges in a timely manner. For example, there are so-called scribes for exams that help children with dyslexia or poor concentration. However, this must be requested from the school authority.
   In order to guarantee a quality education, we would like to keep the class size at around 25 children. This means extremely big financial challenges. School fees were increased in 2023 for the first time in years and structured according to phase (different fees for primary and secondary school). As a result, some families dropped out. Others found accommodation in the sponsorship programme.
   We set up our website last year through which we now receive many inquiries. Our Facebook page and our YouTube channel are active. Of course, the management of the school is crucial and our new headmaster (since March 2023) Blackie Swart brings a lot of experience and credibility, which will lead to stabilization and an increase in quality in the long term. We expect some restructuring and personnel changes in 2024, especially in the upper grades, but we are also hopeful for our high school for 2024.
5. What background do the children come from? What is the structure of the scholarship programme? What is the ratio between paying and non-paying students? How do the school fees compare to other educational institutions?
   Our children come from Sir Lowry’s Pass – a community with an unemployment rate of approximately 66% – and from the surrounding townships. We have children from different backgrounds and cultures – also foreigners, who cannot be accommodated in state schools. Parents, who have jobs, in most cases, work as gardeners, cleaners, in factories or as drivers. Income is around R4 000 to R15 000 per month. My information is, of course, limited to families looking for sponsorships. In the sponsorship programme, we regularly check the financial and social situation of the families and receive additional information from teachers, who monitor academic progress and provide support as needed. We also attach great importance to encouraging families to contribute their own share and thus take responsibility for the school costs. This amount is determined individually. Approximately half of the children are supported by sponsorships. The other half must pay the school fees themselves, which unfortunately often doesn’t happen due to poor financial practices and a lack of income. Since school fees do not fully cover the costs, all children are “sponsored” in some way. Most of the children from the children’s home also come to our school. However, they often struggle with trauma, foetal alcohol syndrome or behavioural problems. Most of our children experience violence in some form. 

Our school fees are extremely low for an independent school like ours. For comparison:

6. What changes have you observed in the children and young people since they started attending school? What positive and negative experiences have you had?

This question is difficult to answer. An African proverb says, “It takes a village to raise a child.” We notice that the influence of the school is limited. We can only change individual lives in collaboration with external social workers, the social welfare office, the police, other NGOs that pick up where we leave off, other schools, tutors, a place in our children’s home and individual career advice, but not alone. 

A. wanted to be a nurse when we first asked her. It turns out she can’t stand to see blood and had imaged nurses as wearing nice uniforms and working with files. After graduating from school, she volunteered to help us out in the sponsorship programme and sat behind a laptop for the first time. A. is now studying administration and receives a scholarship from the state that includes transportation and food costs. This experience showed me that we not only need advice, but also volunteers, who offer internships in their companies and give our learners a hand, help fill out forms for scholarships, etc. This experience sparked the idea for a mentorship programme in collaboration with a local church, but we have not yet had the capacity to initiate it.

B. and her siblings are terribly neglected. The 5-year-old girl’s hair is falling out. The mother is a drug addict and regularly has men visiting. A youth group in Sir Lowry’s Pass provides the children with food, makes home visits and finances a school place with us. Our social worker recommended to the social welfare office that the children come to our children’s home. We found sponsors to pay the school fees. B. looks happier. The simple fact of getting three meals a day and sleeping in a clean bed makes a huge difference. 

C. has been with us since kindergarten. She got through her entire school year without any major problems. In grade 12, she runs away from home. She experienced abuse. Her mother, social worker, other relatives and teachers try to convince her that she should at least write her final exams. Without success.

We have 500 children… 500 different stories.

7. What insights have you gained for your future work?
   Never give up.
8. What measures do you take to protect children from abuse?
   All our employees are screened: We require a police clearance certificate and an extract from the Sexual Offenders Registry for each employee. We report incidents to the police and the social welfare office. We hold workshops for parents and students and give our staff the opportunity to take part in training.
   We urgently need a social worker for the school. Unfortunately, we were unable to fill this position due to financial constraints.
9. How do you ensure that the school will continue to be used for its intended purpose in the coming years?
   a) All our work is aimed at maintaining and developing the school in the long term. The biggest challenge is ongoing financing. We are hopeful that we can accomplish this – as we have done in recent years and months. That’s why there is no reason for us to want to use or sell the school for anything else. In addition, we have been working with Helping Hands (www.helpinghands.org) since June. They have a lot of experience in sustainable development and will give us practical help in formulating our project goals so that we can gain access to other possible resources.
   b) Should the undesirable event arise that the finances are no longer sufficient to maintain the school, our statutes and South African law provide that the school must be sold to a similar institution. Other purposes are excluded.
   c) We are in contact with the Western Cape Education Department, who are keen to create school places and could potentially take over in the event of closure. We already had a conversation about it.
10. Is the recognition of the school by the Western Cape Government a permanent recognition?
    Recognition is permanent, but our compliance is reviewed annually. We receive regular visits from different grade levels and subject advisors. Among other requirements, we send quarterly reports to the school district, all children are registered in the official school system and grades are submitted to the WCED.
    We are still waiting for accreditation from the Authority for Independent Schools. This was rejected in 2018/2019 but was tackled again this year under the leadership of Blackie Swart. We will be informed by the end of the 2023 whether the complex examination (including intensive document creation, class visits, teacher interviews, etc.) was successful.
11. Under what conditions could the school lose recognition again?
    When I asked the school district’s head of compliance what must happen for the department to close the school, he said,” When teachers stop coming to school and students just hang out on the premises and use drugs.” Thankfully, we are a long way from that. The education department is very busy due to the rapid population growth in the Western Cape because of immigration and migration and is therefore happy about any school place that they do not have to look after themselves.
12. State subsidies only cover part of the running costs. You have a committed team and hold fundraising activities, but to what extent are you dependent on support from abroad? Which countries currently provide the most funding for your work? What do you do if subsidies from abroad decline?
    We can always plan… but things usually turn out differently – as this year has shown. The current plan is to cast the net as wide as possible and be grateful for everything that falls into the net:
    a) With many tourists coming to Cape Town, we see an opportunity to open up the world for Hope and Light. We often receive visitors and give tours of the organization. Many sponsorships come about through these tours.
    b) Currently, most donations come from Germany but donations from the UK have increased in percentage in recent years. We have a new contact in France and are working on opening a door to America. South African sponsorships have grown from two to twenty in the last three years. That’s not a lot in terms of budget, but it is a reason for hope.
    c) We rely on personal contact and thanks to our diversity (my two board colleagues are coloured) we have a large network and can send the right person to the right event. We speak different languages and therefore have access to different cultures.
    d) Our B-BBEE Accreditation (a type of quota system for businesses that NPOs with black beneficiaries must support in order not to receive tax penalties), which we applied for this year, has already brought us over R600 000 in donations this year. A financial source that was almost zero last year.
    We believe that the stability of the organization depends on relying on the broadest possible range of donors and donations. Anything else creates unhealthy dependency and stands in the way of sustainability.
13. What would happen to the school if Hope and Light SA could no longer pay for its ongoing operations?
    Between 2019 and 2022, we only carried a small fraction of the ongoing operations ourselves and were largely supported by Hope and Light Germany. Almost overnight, we had to cover all costs ourselves in 2023 (the figures can be seen in the financial report in the newsletter).
    Even if we work towards managing day-to-day operations ourselves in the future, we will always depend on donations, as we do not want to change our vision of caring for the disadvantaged in our society.
14. How big is the organisation? Hope and Light has a budget of R17 million per annum, 58 employees, a few volunteers and freelancers. In addition, we provide transport through our school bus, two meals a day to all children and, of course, 24-hour care in the children’s home.

Question to Judith Hill, director:

How did you come to Hope and Light? What motivates you to stay involved in this project? What do you see as the biggest challenges for your work as you look to the future?

I had heard about Hope and Light through German friends, but it wasn’t until March 2020 that I was asked whether I could help develop an administrative system in the sponsorship programme. The sponsorship program needed a major overhaul and as soon became apparent, so did the rest of the organisation. I was elected to the board of directors in February 2022 and, as a trained European secretary, tried to formalise structures and governance at board level (protocols, data backup, structures, compliance, etc.). In September 2022, my portfolio expanded to include the office of treasurer. We introduced a more transparent accounting system in 2023 and trained employees in finance, thereby providing timely, up-to-date financial reports and constant access to the financial information and, as a result, saved a lot of costs.Our sponsorship programme has grown from approximately 175 children to 250 children since 2020. We have introduced criteria that include a contribution from families. In doing so, we want to address an organisational culture that takes without giving. Every family can contribute something, even if it is practical help rather than money. This required, and still requires, intensive discussions with the parents, constant questions and repetition of the vision, an area, which often falls short because we don’t have enough staff in the various departments. What motivates me is a deep conviction that we are not in this world for ourselves. Even though I unfortunately have less and less direct contact with children and families these days, I would like to support our employees in being able to do this work. In South Africa, I met a great willingness not to leave social upliftment to the state, but to tackle it in a personal capacity. In my case, this specifically means developing sustainable structures, spreading the financial burden across several shoulders, and holding each other accountable. The biggest challenge for the future is finances and unhealthy compromises made due to a lack of finances.