Community Engagement

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead

Through community engagement programmes, Kingswoodians learn the values, discipline and reward of leadership and engagement with others. It fosters a culture in which our pupils can become aware of issues of social justice, and realise that they can make a positive difference through respectful community engagement both within and beyond our school walls.

Lebone Centre

The Lebone Centre, established in 2006, is Kingswood College’s flagship community engagement programme and is administered by the Integrated Community Development Projects Trust (a registered NGO).

The Centre has a Pipeline Programme with three essential elements:

  1. The Little Red Dragon Preschool – a multilingual preschool for 28 children speaking English, Afrikaans and isiXhosa
  2. A structured and holistic aftercare programme for 20 at-risk children in the Foundation Phase
  3. Comprehensive literacy development projects in local schools and the local community

Engaged teaching and learning

Our Community Engagement programme takes place both within the curriculum and beyond the classroom.

In the classroom:

Life Orientation for Grade 8s: Weekly interactive sessions with the 20 children from the Lebone Aftercare programme

Life Orientation for Grade 11s: Interactive sessions with pupils from George Dickerson Primary School, together with the Bridging Year pupils.

Other initiatives:

Interact Club: Fundraising and project support for NGOs and community projects in the surrounding area

Maths support programme for learners from Mary Waters High School

Supporting the literacy initiatives of the Lebone Centre, such as the Classroom Library Project Family Literacy days

Intsomi - Supporting Kingswood staff and their families

The Intsomi Project is a support staff reading project for 27 families (53 children), which aims to encourage reading by making it possible for these staff members to borrow appropriately selected books to read with their children at home. KC Interact members are also doing reading and homework support for the children of support staff on a Friday afternoon.