Three Years Of Change: The Impact Of Education Uplifting Ikasi

Celebrating Year 3 of “Education Uplifting Ikasi”: A Story of Impact, Grit and Possibility

Three years ago, we set out on a bold journey. What began as a hopeful intervention in Grade 8 classrooms has become a living, breathing model of how targeted investment in education can shift not only marks, but mindsets, confidence, and futures. Today, we celebrate the Grade 10 cohort of the Education Uplifting Ikasi program—our flagship initiative at Fons Luminis Secondary School in Diepkloof, Soweto, launched by the 21st Century Foundation.

These learners, our first cohort, have grown with us. And what a story their progress tells.

An overwhelming majority of learners in the program have opted for pure Maths and Commerce streams in Grade 10, traditionally seen and perceived as the most demanding academic routes. Even more significantly, our data shows that the highest-performing learners in the school are largely participants in this program.

But this isn’t just a success story about learners.

This is a story of committed educators, engaged facilitators and partners such as Bright Star Academy, and countless behind-the-scenes efforts to onboard parents and guardians, who, despite their own constraints, have slowly started leaning in. It’s a story of community.

And yet, we cannot tell this story without acknowledging the harder truths.

Many of the learners in our program come from under-resourced, broken homes. They face daily realities of hunger, trauma, depression, substance abuse, and in the most heartbreaking cases, suicidal ideation. These are young people who push themselves—not because they have all the support they need, but often because they don’t.

Recognising the importance of the teaching environment, we are proud to be launching a tailored development program for educators, equipping them with tools in digital learning, AI, and data optimisation to help them manage workloads more effectively and use learner data to drive decisions. After all, to transform the learner experience, we must also transform the classroom experience.

While our program focuses on closing learning gaps in a sustainable way, we now know that academic upliftment alone isn’t enough. We need more partners to help us close the wider socio-economic gaps that hold our youth back.

We’re calling on businesses, NGOs, professionals, artists, entrepreneurs, makers and mentors to join us in these ways:

• Adopt a learner or a grade and bring them into the program.
• Donate your time—just one hour on a Saturday during the course of the program—to share your journey, your industry, your insights.
• Facilitate workshops on entrepreneurship, innovation, self-confidence, mental health and general wellness, or different ways to use AI tools appropriately.
• Be visible. Sometimes just seeing someone who looks like you in a role you never knew existed, is enough to open up a world of possibility.

As 21^st Century, we advise our clients on ESG best practices, but starting the Foundation has made our commitment more than a strategy; it has become our living proof. We're proud to stand not only as a leader in business and human capital consulting but as an example of ESG in action.

Because when businesses grow, as we have over the past 26 years, our responsibility grows with us.

To the learners of the Education Uplifting Ikasi program, you are the reason we do this. You are the future leaders, creators, and change-makers of South Africa. And to everyone reading this, we invite you to be part of a story that’s still being written.

Let’s uplift Ikasi. One learner. One classroom. One opportunity at a time.

Total Words: 584