Sonwabo Primary School was presented with a floating trophy for coming out tops among primary schools in the Rebuilding and Life-skills Training Centre (Realistic) Sifunda Sidlala competition.
Members of Realistic visited the Gugulethu school on Tuesday May 15, to hand over the trophy and medals pupils had won in various activities such as spelling competitions and team building exercises.
The organisations said it was an historical moment for the school as they had defended the floating trophy on Freedom Day.
The annual competition started in 2014 with nine schools from Gugulethu, Nyanga and New Crossroads.
Maphelo Makayi, director at Realistic, said the competition has grown to include more than 18 schools.
He said the competition has different learning areas for pupils. “They are involved in indigenous games, spell checks, team building and many other activities that makes them think. This is a leadership programme that helps them grow as individuals. We also challenge them to fight substance abuse and all other social ills. This school came up tops for the second year successively. We are happy when schools take part in activities that seek to help children grow,” he said.
Before handing out the medals to the pupils, Mr Makayi encouraged them to participate again and urged them to get other children involved.
He told the pupils that when they are faced with peer pressure to do negative things, they should remember what they have learnt from Realistic. The proud organiser of the event said substance abuse is among the challenges young people have to battle.
“This is a way to take them away from such things. We want clean young citizens,” he said.
Sonwabo Primary School deputy principal, Orienda Lizwe, said they were happy with the prize and what her children have achieved.
She attributed the back-to-back win to the school’s policy of not taking things for granted.
“We are a school that are very passionate about what we do. We do not take things cheaply. We make sure that in whatever we do, we do it seriously. We instil that winning mentality in our children. We always encourage them to be part of any good competition,” she said.
Ms Lizwe said the trophy would enable other children to realise the benefits of being part of the learning groups.
She said it would also motivate others to join the group. She said she was happy because they always encouraged their slower learners to always partake in competitions. “We always transfer the information to all our children. We mix those who learn fast and our slow learners in one pot. The results are what you seeing today,” she told Vukani.
Grade 7 pupil Siyamcela Zoya said he was happy to be part of the winning crew. He said the activities and the learning areas were interesting. He urged other pupils to be part of the competition next year.
