BY OBAKENG MAJE
The North West Education and Sport Development Department celebrated the Youth Month by empowering the Grade 9, 10 and 11 Representative Council Leaders on becoming a responsible leader through an intensive summit held on Saturday, 25 July 2015 at Vryburg.

Non-negotiables for learners were at centre stage which highlighted that learners should be in class at all times and that they must use all the available support materials provided such as textbooks.

North West Education and Sport Development spokesperson Elias Malindi said “The key objectives of the summit were to provide leaders of learners a platform to raise challenges they face in their different schools, to have clear implementable resolutions which are SMART(Simple Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time bound) and get learners in the province to commit to a vision of turning our schools into crime and violence free institutions.”

Malindi said the department in empowering the student leadership went out of its way to organise experts from different fields and several resolutions were adopted which included: To focus on increasing basic safety conditions in schools, decreasing incidents of violence and crime through  prevention, intervention support and advocacy.

“A need to empower RCL’s as an important channel of liaison between teachers, learners, parents, community and organisations was also recognised at the summit,” he said.

Commitments made by the RCL’s  are to promote schools as smoke free zones, making schools drug and weapon free and ensuring crime and violent incidents do not go unreported.

He said the key challenges facing learners noted at the summit were corporal punishment, bullying, food security, teenage pregnancies and road accidents whilst travelling to areas of learning.

Amongst the dignitaries who motivated the learners was billionare Thapelo Tshepe who hails from Bethanie Village in the North West. He became a millionaire at age of 21 and he told learners that your background does not determine your destiny, it is possible to achieve anything if you are determined.

The summit saw key partnerships being formed between the Department of Education and Sports Development, SAPS, Office of the Premier, municipalities, NPA, Lovelife and the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development.

“It was agreed that the RCL committee will hold briefing meeting with all the other learners to inform them about the resolutions as a way of cascading information to all the learners in the province,” concludes Malindi.

-TDN

Follow us on Twitter@Taung_DailyNews or @IceT_