DIGITAL AND INNOVATION NEXT PHASE OF DEVELOPMENT AT BAPHUMELELE CYCC

By Cuma Pantshwa.

• The children at the Baphumelele Child and Youth Care Centre in Khayelitsha are learning the basics of coding, making sure they do not miss out on the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
• Baphumelele aims to bridge the digital divide, expand learning opportunities, and equip young people with critical skills for the future.
• ⁠It was from the need to make sure the children at Baphumelele are not left behind that its Tech Hub was born.

For over three decades, the Baphumelele Child and Youth Care Centre has stood as a beacon of hope for vulnerable children in Khayelitsha.

Today, as the world shifts into the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Baphumelele is taking a future-focused approach to ensure that its children are not left behind in a rapidly digitising world.

One of the volunteers helping drive this vision is Lea Franzky (26), from Munich, Germany.

Franzky has been living at Baphumelele for 10 months, sharing everyday life with the children she now calls family.

A student of art therapy and theatre at the Ludwig-Maximilians University, Franzky says her time at Baphumelele has changed her life forever, so much so that she now plans to shift her studies to social work, inspired by her role model, Mam’Rosie Mashale, the founder of Baphumelele.

Franzky reflected on her time at the centre. “This is a place full of powerful, young, and resilient people. The people who work here in this NGO (non-governmental organisation) don’t wait for help; they uplift their community every day, by themselves.

“What I’ve learned here is that many Western people think they have the solutions, but the truth is, when we step outside our own borders, we realise we have so much to learn.

“Sometimes, help shouldn’t be about playing the hero. Real help means redistributing resources that were never fairly shared to begin with. That’s how we start to break privilege.”

Together with Baphumelele’s team, she is helping introduce children to the basics of coding through unplugged coding activities, simple, playful exercises that lay the groundwork for digital literacy.

Vusi Sidindi, the operations manager at Baphumelele, who is working closely with Franzky, explains why this work is so urgent. “We are in a digital migration. Artificial intelligence is here; the Fourth Industrial Revolution is real.

“But how do we respond to the fact that we find ourselves on the wrong side of a digital divide?

“In Khayelitsha, our children don’t have easy access to data or wifi. Sometimes they stand near wifi hotspots, trying to connect in any way they can. We realised we couldn’t let them be left behind.”

It was out of this need, Baphumelele’s Tech Hub was born – an innovative project to introduce children to robotics, coding, and digital skills from as early as Grade R.

Despite limited resources, the centre makes the most of every opportunity: donated tablets from a sister school have become vital learning tools.

Franzky explains that the same educational apps used in German schools are now helping Baphumelele’s children master foundational skills.

This next chapter focuses on harnessing technology and introducing these children to digital literacy.

Baphumelele aims to bridge the digital divide, expand learning opportunities, and equip young people with critical skills for the future.

This progressive vision aligns with building a future South Africa and resilient communities, ensuring that every child has access to the digital world and the opportunities it holds.

“There’s a big need, a big gap,” Franzky says.

“During Covid-19, we saw clearly that digital education is a human right, not just a child’s right. We want our kids to grow up confident in technology. We want to expand from unplugged coding to proper coding, robotics, and hybrid learning platforms, but we need more laptops, more tablets, more support.”

To close this gap, Baphumelele plans to launch a hybrid university next year – an online learning platform that will expand access to high-quality education and digital resources for young people in the community.

Through this new phase, Baphumelele continues its mission: caring for families, protecting children, and building resilient communities ready for the challenges and opportunities of the future.