“Songo has humble beginnings: from a dream of providing a safe space for children to play on bikes, it has evolved into an Educational and Sports programme focused on creating a long-term impact for the children in Kayamandi, Stellenbosch. Our key objective is that every child who comes through the Songo programme goes on to be a confident, well-rounded individual who is gainfully employed and a contributing member of the community. We currently have 85 children from ages 6 to 24 years within the Songo family.”
ABOUT
Songo has various programmes
Sports programme:
- BMX
- Mountain biking
- Songo tots
Education programme:
- General school support
- Reading eggs
- Tertiary education support
Leadership:
They aim to broaden the children’s horizons, assisting them to gain the skills that enable them to cope with the challenges that life throws at them.
OUR INITIATIVES
A hands-on approach
Transaction Junction has ongoing initiatives to support the Songo children and staff. Songo is very personal to us, we make monthly visits to check-in, help out wherever possible, and of course, ride bikes with the kids on their awesome trail!
TANKS: Learn to code
We facilitated the launch of TANKS at Songo. TANKS is a problem-solving game that teaches the basics of programming in a fun and creative way. Using a combination of tokens and an app, TANKS is an initiative that can introduce anyone to the world of coding without the need for a computer. Songo was already equipped with School in a Box which is an initiative that supports learning through tablets – this, along with the tokens, provided the platform for us to do the launch.
Supporting the computer lab
We set up a computer lab to provide a space where children visit after school to do homework, print materials and in-turn improve their computer literacy. We set up the infrastructure, installed WiFi and we also donate laptops on a regular basis.
We also provide ongoing in-house IT training for the Songo staff to enable them to provide their own IT services.
