Veron Youth Academy (VYA) delivers an after-school soccer training and education program to underprivileged boys and girls in the Helderberg area.
Our program empowers 6-to-18 year old learners through developing their social capital, life skills, and sportsmanship, as well as through the provision of targeted academic support and career guidance.
In this way, we assist learners to build positive futures for themselves and to break the cycle of poverty and hopelessness inherited from the Apartheid regime.
Within the next 5-10 years we aim to establish a soccer-focused boarding school for learners from the community. Please reach out to us if you are intested in becoming a part of this vision: empower@vya.co.za
We provide safe space for girls and boys to develop important life competences based on a shared value-system.
We offer mentorship and provide guidance to encourage the development of self-esteem, life skills, and social capital
We develop athletes who can confidently compete on a high-performance level and experience self-efficacy.
We ensure a trusting environment with a culture of constructive criticism to keep our learners involved in the programme and in school (combating drop-out).
We support our learners individually so that they can succeed in their further training or studies, leading to meaningful employment.
Vision & Mission
We achieve our vision & mission through an educational and training approach that is built on having high expectations of our learners, providing them with clear structure and boundaries, and showering them with love, support, and recognition.
Such an approach is not only supported by educational sociologists (Sadovnik, 2008), but is considered best practice in the field of Positive Youth Development (Fraser-Thomas, et al., 2005; Hellison, 2010; Petitpas, et al., 2005).
In this way, we offer underprivileged youth access to occupational justice through an after-school programme which engages with the specific challenges that their community face. Namely;
A final key element in facilitating positive youth development will be the provision of basic nutritional support, given the mental, emotional, and physical work required to participate in our programme.
Background
In isiXhosa eLwandle means ‘the sea’ and sometimes refers to the beach. Lwandle township is located in the Helderberg area, and was designed to be one of the many dormitory areas on the edges of Apartheid cities created for people who were racially classified as ‘native’. Restricted to living in such areas, without proper infrastructure or public services, they worked on fixed short-term contracts which required them to return to rural ‘homelands’ at regular intervals (Witz, 2011, pp. 373-4).
During Apartheid this migrant labour system prevailed across the country and resulted in a pattern of widespread family disruption among black South Africans. Wives were stranded in the ‘homelands’, overburdened by dual roles and responsibilities and lacking support and money – scholars have described this as the “state-orchestrated destruction of family life” (Budlender & Lund, 2011, p. 926).
While today the migrant labour model is no longer part of state policy and families have come to settle together in the townships, the legacy of family disruption and other destructive Apartheid policies lives on in Lwandle and the rest of South Africa (Posel & Casale, 2006). Presently, Lwandle is characterized by low levels of educational attainment and high rates of unemployment and gender-based violence.
These circumstances reflect a situation of occupational injustice, where people in the community are not able to meet their basic needs and do not have equal access to opportunities to reach toward their potential through engagement in diverse and meaningful occupation (Wilcock & Townsend, 2009). Occupational justice is a particular category of social justice related to the intrinsic need for humans to explore and act on their environments in ways that provide healthy levels of intellectual stimulation, and allow for personal care, safety, subsistence, pleasure, and social participation.
For example, the absence of meaningful after-school programmes for young people creates a situation where youth are not occupied with healthy personal development activities. The incredible demand for youth soccer training programmes in Lwandle is just one example that illustrates this need.
References:
- Budlender, D. & Lund, F., 2011. South Africa: A legacy of family disruption. Development and Change, 42(4), pp. 925-946.
- Fraser-Thomas, J. L., Côté, J. & Deakin, J., 2005. Youth sport programs: an avenue to foster positive youth development. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 10(1), pp. 19-40.
- Hellison, D., 2010. Teaching personal and social responsibility through physical activity. s.l.:Human Kinetics.
- Petitpas, A. J., Cornelius, A. E., Van Raalte, J. L. & Jones, T., 2005. A framework for planning youth sport programs that foster psychosocial development. The sport psychologist, 19(1), pp. 63-80.
- Posel, D. & Casale, D., 2006. Chapter 10: Internal labour migration and household poverty in post-apartheid South Africa. In: H. Bhorat & R. Kanbur, eds. Poverty and Policy in Post-apartheid South Africa. Cape Town: Human Sciences Research Council, pp. 351-365.
- Sadovnik, A. R., 2008. Schools, Social Class, and Youth: A Bernsteinian Analysis. In: L. Weis, ed. The Way Class Works: Readings on School, Family, and the Economy. New York: Routledge.
- Wilcock, A.A. & Townsend, E.A. (2009). Occupational justice. In E.B. Crepeau, E.S. Cohn & B.A. Boyt Schell (Eds.), Willard & Spackman’s occupational therapy (11th ed., pp. 192-199). Baltimore: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
- Witz, L., 2011. Revisualising township tourism in the Western Cape: the Migrant Labour Museum and the re-construction of Lwandle. Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 29(4), pp. 371-388.