About

Harkerville School was set up to serve the community of Harkerville, a small town between Knysna and Plettenberg Bay, on the famous South African Garden Route.

It takes children in from the surrounding areas of Wittedrif, Kwanokothula and New Horizons, and has grown significantly in recent years under the current headship of Chantelle Mahmout.
(in 2015 there were around 70 children, 140 in 2017 and around 250 in 2018)

In recent years various local and international organisations have helped build school buildings:

• Born In Africa, a Belgian NGO – 3 new classrooms, a showerblock
• Rotary International: furniture inside classrooms
• Diocese of Plettenberg Bay (Anglican Church) – toilet block

Founder

Hi! I am Tracey Rissik, the founder of the Keeping Kids In School initiative. I was born in Johannesburg & lived in South Africa until the late 1990’s, when I moved to the UK. I still have most of my family living in various parts of the Western Cape, and visit them regularly.

In early 2016, I came across the initiative called “Zabra”, which collects unwanted and unused bras and through a network of volunteers, gets them to women and girls in need, mainly in South Africa but also in any part of the world that volunteers are able to transport bras for distribution. I got involved as this is a win-win situation : helping women & girls in need AND keeping bras out of landfill.

My first fund-raising project was to enable me to get a large suitcase of bras to South Africa – I needed to raise funds for the airline’s excess baggage charges (around £65). People were so moved by the idea of helping women & girls in need that I raised more than I needed(around £250), so with the enthusiastic assistance of my niece and sister-in-law, I was able to purchase a large amount of sanitary products when I was in Cape Town, thanks to these generous donors! These went to a few local womens shelters and schools.

The following year, I raised about £400, again to take out a large suitcase of bras for Zabra. I was then staying with familiy in Plettenberg Bay, and met a volunteer teacher at the Harkerville School, where my dad was involved in some voluntary assistance through the church.

After hearing about the straitened circumstances that so many of the children live with, I went to the local “Clicks” (the equivalent of Boots in the UK), chatted to the manager there and managed to get another large bootload of productss, this time including basics such as toothbrushes, shampoo, soap and toothpaste. When I gave this to the teacher to distribute to the children through a “Care Cupboard”, she was delighted (an understatement!) – and you can see from some photos just how much this help from abroad made the children happy. They couldn’t believe that a group of (mainly) women from 6,ooo miles away could really care about them.

[Note: the manager at Clicks gave me generous discounts on all “own brand” products, thus increasing the power of the British Pounds!]

In 2018 I did the same, this time managing to raise about £600. It was impossible to spend all the money as the only Clicks in the town of Plettenberg Bay started to run out of products 🙂

The balance of the money was held in account, to be used during the year, as and when needed. The volunteer teacher contacted me to request if certain items of uniform could be purchased for specific children, and when the school’s funding was running low we were able to supply stationery too.

The British Pound goes a long way in Africa!

These experiences gave me the motivation to set up “Keeping Kids In School”  – if you and I can help even just 30 or 40 girls … just think of the knock-on effect to them, their families and future generations.

THIS is what makes me want to do this…