A school filled with angels without wings deserves a set of wheels without worries to ensure the job of transporting and teaching about 200 underprivileged pupils continues unabated.
Isuzu Motors South Africa, in partnership with Ironman 4 the Kids initiative, recently rode in to help Heatherbank Primary School earlier this month through the sponsorship of a 60-seater school bus.
Principal Ellen Lovemore has been leading the charge – for about a decade - to ensure the pupils, most of whom are from Walmer Township, get the same quality of education her own children receive.
Lovemore – through a trust – took ownership of the school after the department of education closed it in 2010 due to dwindling pupil numbers, multi-grade teaching and other factors.
However, as a result, Lovemore was forced to rely heavily on the surrounding community, business and her own family to fund the needs of the school, which included scholar transport – one of their biggest headaches.
“Transport has been an issue for years.
“For the past six years we have been using a very old bus that we bought with a million kilometres on the clock. It does two trips to pick up the kids in the morning and another two to take them home but it isn’t all that reliable.
“And while it sometimes broke down, affecting schooling, it was still safer than the children being dropped off by bakkies as they were in the past, with up to 20 of them crammed in the back at a time,” Lovemore said.
“Hence the sponsored bus, even though it’s not new, will have a huge impact in ensuring the pupils are safely transported, which is our biggest concern.
“And it will also ensure that we are able to provide quality education on a daily basis through a reliable mode of transport.
“A factor which is more crucial than a lot realise.”
Lovemore said the bus would make eight stops daily in Walmer Township to ensure the pupils were picked up and dropped off as close to their respective homes as possible, to curb the chance of them falling victim to crime and other social ills plaguing the area.
Ironman 4 the Kids trustee Gary Stephenson said after completing the building of the new Early Bird Creche in Walmer Township, it was a “natural flow” to assist in the next step in their education.
“Through the 70.3 World Championship event, we managed to raise about R2m for once-off community projects in the Bay. Initially we built the creche, then we heard about how the Heatherbank school bus was falling apart,” he said.
“After that we realised it is just a natural flow, whereby we had to continue to assist as a lot of the young pupils from the area end up opting to go to Heatherbank Primary because of the amazing job they are doing,” Stephenson said.
Isuzu Motors South Africa spokesperson Gishma Johnson said they were happy to assist as the company leveraged key partnerships to find sustainable solutions in the community.
“The Heatherbank School transport support is made possible through our partnership with Ironman 4 the Kids and ensures that more than 100 pupils from Walmer Township are safely transported to and from school every day.
“Our slogan, with you for the long run, not only refers to the unwavering reliability of our vehicles, but also to the long-term impact our contributions have on the community,” she said.