In April 2024, eight skilled volunteers from Salesforce participated in an on-site Team4Tech project to support LEAP Science and Maths Schools in South Africa.
Providing High-Quality Education to the Future Leaders of South Africa
It is estimated that the South African education system produces just one graduate for every 100 children who start Grade 1. Students living in townships are at a huge disadvantage where 2/3 suffer from domestic violence. During Apartheid, black South Africans were not allowed to learn math and science. Formed amidst apartheid in 1990 out of the Langa Education Assistance Program (LEAP), LEAP Science and Maths Schools now has six secondary schools (grades 8-12) and provides high-quality, low-fee education to 1,500 students living in underserved townships across South Africa.
LEAP has partnered with Team4Tech since 2014 to help improve the quality of education for their students. Through technology solutions and teacher training workshops, Team4Tech’s projects have helped build STEM education capacity and increase LEAP’s impact, resulting in significant educational benefits for their students.
Volunteers Collaborate to Improve Educational Systems
During this latest project, Team4Tech facilitated collaboration between Salesforce volunteers and LEAP staff to address various technical challenges and enhance their schools’ educational infrastructure. The project supported three LEAP school sites in the Western Cape: LEAP 1 in Langa, LEAP 2 in Philippi, and the newly opened LEAP 7 in Paarl.
The volunteers collaborated with LEAP staff to make improvements to existing educational infrastructure, including:
- Updating the intranet system to accommodate the new school and resolve lingering back-end issues
- Patching and updating the current Moodle LMS system LEAP staff use for grading, attendance, and reporting
Leveraging their expertise, volunteers also worked together to recommend that LEAP transition from their current self-hosted Moodle implementation to cloud-based solutions. This shift will help mitigate the effects of load shedding and unstable power in South Africa while providing better scalability as LEAP continues to grow. The team proposed a full cloud-based Moodle implementation with Amazon Web Services servers and developed a roll-out plan involving:
- small-scale testing
- pilot during the last quarter of the current school year
- full roll-out in the next school year
Volunteers Collaborate on Training Sessions for Educators
Another significant component of the project was Google Classroom training for teachers. The Salesforce volunteers provided comprehensive training sessions and shared valuable resources including the Google Teacher Center and the CommonSense.org Essential Guide to Google Classroom.
With these resources, LEAP teachers can effectively utilize Google Classroom in their teaching practices, which will help them:
- Reuse assignments, tests, or other course content in future classes
- Share videos, links, or images from other websites with students
- Draft assignments or announcements and schedule them to launch at a later date
- Use Google Calendar to track assignment due dates
- Export grades to Google Sheets or a .CSV file
This collaboration between Team4Tech, Salesforce volunteers, and LEAP Science and Maths Schools not only addressed immediate technical challenges but also laid the foundation for future growth and educational excellence. By leveraging cloud-based solutions and equipping teachers with the necessary skills to utilize digital tools like Google Classroom, LEAP is well-positioned to continue helping learners achieve their full potential.
This is just one example of Team4Tech’s global contributions to education. Our organization continues to accelerate the impact of nonprofit organizations globally.