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As a local NGO we need your donation in order to provide high quality IT lessons to our learners in the awarenet programme. Support us!
TEACH
You are a teacher and want to offer your learners high quality IT lessons? Be part of the movement and join our professional network.
LEARN
Access to knowledge, creative projects, IT and Internet skills and improved employment chances. There are many reasons to join awarenet.
VOLUNTEER
You would like to get involved? Welcome on board! Find out how you can join our awarenet team and the weltwärts community.
About us
awarenet is an eLearning platform and social media tool that offers our learners a personal networking space, tools for blogging, online discussions and project work in wiki style incl. multi media. They learn how to present themselves online, how to connect and communicate responsibly in a secure and safe space. Groups meet on a weekly basis and work on various projects about culture, health, music, science, history and social services, whereby online and offline work is combined. Projects lead to major local activities and events such as public concerts, sport days, newspaper articles and social engagements. We further offer to install awarenet servers in existing computer labs and give combined introductory workshops for teachers, in which we train general IT skills and showcase how to integrate awarenet into the curriculum or co-curriculars. The platform is developed in such a way that remote schools without or interrupted Internet access can use it as well as it also functions when offline. The awarenet software is free open-source. The awarenet programme offers many opportunities to learners and teachers as well as partnering NGOs in the educational sector.
The awarenet Open Lab is a project that was established in May of 2017 in cooperation with Rod Amner, a VSA board member and Rhodes lecturer. The goal of the Open Lab is to give free Internet access to the members of the Joza community and educate them in ICT through the method of "learning by doing". The project has so far been very sucessful, as there are more than 450 members registered with us. In addition to just giving access to the Internet for free, we also offer specific courses, focused on computer education. So far we had a course involving Blockly, a variant of the scratch computer language, and a video editing course which has the goal of producing a short movie in which the participants appear as actors and cut the movie themselves in the end. We hope that we can continue the project for a long time, however it is dependent on donations. If you want to support the Open Lab feel free to donate items or visit our betterplace.org site to support us financially.
The awarenet Teachers course is another project that we have been working on. As part of the course, teachers from local primary and high schools are being educated about how they can use ICT to enrich their lessons. This means that we show them how to do reliable research on the Internet, how to design presentations which can be used in addition to writing content on blackboards and how to use email. The aim of the awarenet Teachers course is to improve the quality of the education which the learners receive through helping the teachers to adapt their lessons to the present.
OUR TEAM
Kjetil Torp
Zintle Vambe
Thanduxolo Royi
Martin Zabel
Kela Iheanetu
Latifa Abdoulahi
Simphiwe Gwaza
Richard Were
Clement Simuja
IT and Educational Advisor
Rod Amner
Chairperson
Dr Sarah Hanton
Educational Advisor
Craig Renaud
Legals, Treasurer
Ronald Wertlen
German Partner
DR ANNA WERTLEN
German Partner
Our Testimonials
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Latest news
Youth find common ground across the Atlantic
High school learners from two very different countries – South Africa and the US – shared their experiences of school and life during a marathon two-hour Zoom organised by Inkululeko and supported by Awarenet’s Talking Technology to Power project. Eight learners from a technical high school in Syracuse, New York, met with 12 learners from Read more about Youth find common ground across the Atlantic[…]
WRO Robotics In-house Competition
On Saturday morning we hosted the first WRO Robotics (World Robotics In-house Olympiad) Competition this year. A lot of learners from different schools around the neighbourhood and friends of the participants also attended the competition to root for their favourite teams. The three Robotics groups came together on Saturday and worked in groups of 4-7 Read more about WRO Robotics In-house Competition[…]
Social Employment Fund – part 2!
Awarenet has for the second year in a row been contracted to coordinate the Social Employment Fund among 17 non profit organisations in Makhanda! The project provides government funding for previously unemployed community members to work in a multitude of organisations which primarily work in the after-school sector; among other things helping learners achieve academic, Read more about Social Employment Fund – part 2![…]
My first week at Awarenet
On the 13th of September, my volunteer year at Awarenet started. This volunteer year is done through the German government’s weltwaerts program. After a long and strenuous journey from Bremen, Germany to Makhanda, South Africa, I am happy to finally be able to start my work at the Joza Youth Hub with Awarenet. Since my Read more about My first week at Awarenet[…]
Rejuvenating Rivers awareness event
On the 9th of September 2023, Awarenet and Inkululeko co-hosted a Rejuvenating Rivers awareness event at Vukani location. Learners from our after school programs as well as the community of Vukani Location were all invited to join the event. The purpose of the event was to inform the community about the project as well as Read more about Rejuvenating Rivers awareness event[…]
WRO Robotics Competition
On the 5th of August, Awarenet took 9 learners to a World Robotic Olympiad competition at Kingswood College. The competition serves as a qualifier for the national competition in Gauteng which in turn qualifies teams for the international Robotic Olympiad. The best of the Awarenet robotics teams took part in this competition which was the Read more about WRO Robotics Competition[…]
Awarenet matric class outing
On the 7th of July 2023, Awarenet took its Matric class for a day outing to eMpekweni beach resort. The purpose of the trip was to reconnect with our learners as we had not really seen them regularly this year. The learners had expressed that they have their normal classes daily, afternoon classes as well Read more about Awarenet matric class outing[…]
Robotics Competition
10th of June Awarenet hosted its first Robotics in House competition at the Joza Youth Hub. We had learners from five different schools of our schools that we trained who attended the competition and our trainers who assisted with judging on the day. The competition we had was helping our learners for preparations for the Read more about Robotics Competition[…]
Exciting new collaboration for the Olico programme
The Olico program is in its 2nd year of implementation at Awarenet and it is still going well. This year we recruited new grade 8 and 9 learners from surrounding high schools and we had many learners sign up at the beginning of the year. As the program began in mid January, we saw a Read more about Exciting new collaboration for the Olico programme[…]
New Core Group Orientation Camp
Awarenet has recruited a new group of grade 8 and 9 learners to their core group programme. Last week, on the 27th of May we invited 23 learners from both grade 8 and 9 to a camp at the DSG Monastery which is located in the magnificent Eastern Cape countryside, a mere 10 km from Read more about New Core Group Orientation Camp[…]