Improving Educational Access, Quality, and Environment in Rural Intabazwe, South Africa

Despite the rapid modernization and urban development in South Africa in the 20th and 21st centuries, many of the country’s citizens in its rural and underdeveloped areas struggle with meeting their basic needs such as food security, sanitation, and education due to mismanagement of resources and government corruption. Through my Service-Learning Project, I aimed to try to lessen these disparities through targeting educational access, quality, and environment in the rural town of Intabazwe, South Africa. For access to education, I wanted to have a menstrual product drive since millions of South African girls miss a large part of their schooling every year just because they don’t have access to menstrual products. I also demonstrated how to use the pads to the girls and women who had never seen a pad before. For educational quality and environment, I donated various school supplies, including dry-erase math workbooks and a massive whiteboard, and playground equipment, including a trampoline, two seesaws, and two netball hoops. Throughout this process, I constantly had to re-budget and reschedule to account for new issues that arose every day. From this, I grew profoundly in my project management skills, learning adaptability to be able to have contingencies for any unexpected situations. Most meaningfully, however, I was able to connect with the people of Intabazwe on a personal level and really listen to their wants and needs, allowing me to serve them best and to learn from them.https://stars.library.ucf.edu/hip-2023fall/1044/thumbnail.jp