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Oasis Haven is a nonprofit organization located in a suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa.
Their mission is to rescue and care for abandoned and orphaned children. They do this through their 2 family homes and with the ultimate goal of finding a forever family for each child through adoption. Oasis Haven believes that "Family" is the key ingredient to effectively dealing with the South African orphan crisis. Oasis Haven believes education is one of the key pillars to breaking the cycle of poverty and vulnerability for children in South Africa.
It costs $27,000 per year to send their 20 children to the specialized schools they need in order to thrive. This request is to pay for funding for a portion of those fees.
A quality education will ensure that once the children leave our care they will be able to become employed and care for themselves and their future families. The contributions by Rotary towards education enable Oasis Haven to ensure that we can source the best education possible for each child; and investment in their future, not just a basic need for their current situation.
Oasis Haven is committed to providing and creating an environment where orphaned and vulnerable children are able to thrive educationally. Part of our ethos is that just being in any school is not sufficient as each child has unique and individual abilities. Early childhood development is shown to have a huge impact on a child's academic abilities. As children are admitted to our care at different ages often their early childhood development is lacking. We find the need to therefore continuously adjust the way we do school and where we send children to in order for them to get the assistance they require to catch up academically.
Oasis Haven currently has children in two different schools namely The Kings School Robinhills which caters for 7 of our children. This is a private school in the Robinhills area providing excellent mainstream education and providing a 50% discount. Our annual fees are approximately $14 000 per year.
Our second school is a government school namely Blairgowrie Primary that accommodates only 1 child from Oasis Haven and where we are receive 100% concession.
In 2021 Oasis Haven formally started a homeschool center on site in one of our homes.
When our children had to be homeschooled during COVID-19 huge educational gaps were identified for 5 of our older children. The reality is that those gaps will not be closed without individual attention and so a homeschool was started employing one teacher for the younger children and making use of our social worker to teach the older ones. The curriculum was obtained through a homeschool education center called Clonard which has 20 years experience in homeschooling.
The total cost of the homeschool program is approximately $13 000 per year for 13 of our children.
Our mission and goal with regards to education is to provide all children with a foundation that can change their trajectory towards one that is prosperous.
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