4-7 Years
About Us
Our Partner School in South Africa
Our long-standing partnership with Makukhanye School, South Africa brings tremendous rewards to children of both schools.
Since 2003 St Faith’s has supported Makukhanye Township School in Jeffreys Bay, Eastern Cape, South Africa. This mutually beneficial relationship grew from simple beginnings from the planning of a rugby tour to the region. As part of our first visit in 2003 we were able to raise enough funds through internal activities at St Faith’s to build a school hall. Since then we have held many fund raising activities including an annual day at St Faith’s dedicated to learning more about life in a township in South Africa. This has generated funds to provide a hot food program which has been so successful that the Eastern Cape Department of Education has rolled out similar programs across the township schools in the region.
We have also funded the paving of outside areas to reduce muddiness and installed a tarmac area for hard court sports. More recently, funds from St Faith’s have been used to refurbish and better equip classrooms and to provide weekday hot food for all pupils and weekend food for the considerable number of orphans at the school.
In 2024 35 pupils and 6 members of staff went to South Africa and the first few days were spent forging new friendships at Makukhanye School, where our pupils were greeted warmly by their hosts, taken by the hand and accompanied into school. During the time there, our hosts played hockey, netball, football and chess matches against the St Faith’s teams and our music ensembles performed for their new audiences. Much to the delight of our pupils, this was reciprocated by traditional African dance and music performances.
Undoubtedly, one of the many highlights of the time spent at our partner school was the inauguration of the Makukhanye Medical Center. This was one of the major commitments that we had made to the school to provide, and was made possible by joint funding from St Faith’s and the Georg Ludwig Rexroth Foundation, an initiative instigated by the company of one of our own parents. We are very grateful for this generous support, which allowed the facility to be equipped with two brand new treatment tables, as well as other core medical supplies. The new Centre will serve the school community very well over the coming years. The ribbon-cutting ceremony was a moment of pride and hope, demonstrating our commitment to the Makukhanye school community.
Clearly the impact of our partnership on Makukhanye school is significant and much welcomed. The benefits to St Faith’s are also numerous and speak volumes to our school culture and our aim of growing our pupils into global citizens who understand their privileged place in the world and responsibility to help others. We want our pupils to receive not only an excellent all-round education but to also develop an awareness of the world beyond Cambridge, and to develop early in life a mind-set of charity and philanthropy. Participation in a trip of such geographical reach and ambition is a tremendous character and confidence builder for children of just 12-13 years and stands them in very good stead for their progression to senior school.