YeBo for T2P!
22 August 2022
The Western Cape Education Department’s (WCED) Transform to Perform (T2P) team bellowed a resounding “YeBo!” when asked to participate in the latest leg of the YearBeyond (YeBo) Youth Programme.
The YearBeyond Youth Programme’s stated aim is to “link young people that are not in employment, education or training to increased economic opportunity”. They do this by training young people to serve as teacher assistants and tutors in after school literacy and numeracy programmes for Grades 3 and 4 learners in under-resourced schools across the province.
The programme is managed by the Department of Cultural Affairs and Sport (DCAS) and has become the longest running of its kind since it started in 2015.
The Provincial T2P Team was asked to facilitate two sessions on Sunday, 17 July 2022, at the University of the Western Cape and the topic in the spotlight was “Mindset: Change, Grow, Adapt understanding and dealing with fixed and growth mindset”.
The team was represented by Warda Conrad, its leader and Provincial Strategy Driver of T2P.
The sessions were attended by 71 participants. Each session was one and a half hours long. Participants were required to complete a baseline and endline self-perception survey which showed their state of self-perception pre and post the workshop session. Participants, ranging in age from 18 to 26 and predominantly Afrikaans and Xhosa Home Language speakers from the Eden Central Karoo and Overberg districts were soon lapping up Conrad’s expertise in mindset change having no fewer than two such programmes, namely Change Mindset (CM) and Growth Mindset (GM) in the T2P stable. Conrad, an experienced and accredited Neuro Linguistic Practitioner, had little trouble in triggering the young men and women to undergo a journey of finding their best selves.
According to the organisers, feedback so far has proven positive and has opened a new realm of possibilities for T2P as a strategy as the sessions indeed highlighted a need to develop and facilitate more of these mindset sessions with youth and has emphasised the need to continue to scale the Growth and Change Mindset Projects that form part of the WCED’s T2P Strategy currently being implemented across all schools in the province.
Conrad asserts that “the workshop has highlighted a need to develop and facilitate more of these mindset sessions with youth and has emphasised the need to continue to scale the Growth and Change Mindset Projects that form part of the WCED’s T2P Strategy currently being implemented across all schools in the province”.
Furthermore, that “other sessions of this type should be developed that focuses on change mindset activities coupled with growth mindset theory”. For Conrad, this approach also seemed to show enormous potential for further development to meet the needs of this age group and could also be implemented at schools for learners in Grades 10 to 12.
