The schools, chosen from every continent, presented on the theme of “Learning Today”, and each school hosted a virtual event to demonstrate how to create change, based on their own innovations and successes, with an online audience calculated to reach 100,000 worldwide. The ambition driving World Education Week is to accelerate progress to achieve UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, a commitment designed to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning for all.
“The management of the Salesian Institute Youth Projects (SIYP), pupils and teachers of the Learn to Live School of Skills are delighted to be included in this incredible global showcase of 100 schools! World Education Week will allow us to learn and innovate together with 100 schools from across the world, all committed to transforming education. With our focus on vocational skills training and project-based learning to youth from marginalised backgrounds, we are proud to be a special school of skills and are looking forward to sharing our practice in October,” said Fr Patrick Naughton, CEO of SIYP, before the event took place.
The Salesian Institute Youth Projects is a registered NGO. The Salesian order has been delivering on their commitment and calling to the education and training of youth in their present premises at 2 Somerset Road, Green Point, Cape Town for over a century. Salesian Institute for Youth Projects (SIYP) was established in 1910 and is now operating with a level 1 B-BBEE status. This year SIYP is celebrating its 110th anniversary. SIYP offers various youth development programmes to at-risk youth in and around Cape Town.
The Learn to Live School of Skills is one of the programmes at the Salesian Institute Youth Projects. It is currently the only school specialising in Special Skills in the whole of the Western Cape. We have developed programmes to teach critical life skills and help disadvantaged youth get back on their feet and enter the increasingly competitive job market. This is the core of what we do.
The Salesian Institute Youth Projects touches the lives of hundreds of greater Cape Town’s street and vulnerable youth. Many of these are the forgotten ones, some the very unfortunate products of dysfunctional and abusive families, some are influenced by the prevalent drug and gang cultures, and almost all are depressed by a background of poverty. Without a positive intervention in their lives, there would be little hope, little expectation of a normal life, nor much chance of them taking their place in society.
“World Education Week” is an effort by thirty civil society organisations coming together after the record-breaking T4 conference on 30th May that was attended by over 100,000 teachers.
