CEO’s Year in Review

Synchronicity, albeit noncausal, remains an interesting thing…. As we were planning the “children’s book” theme for our annual report, our Board Chair, Ian Russell, published his second book, The Upside of Being Myself and Other Leadership Stories. In the book, Ian retells the story of the Little Red Hen, but through the lens of effective leadership. Imagine our delight at the dovetail!

2022 was our back-to-the-future year. It was packed with beginnings, once-agains and endings. Soon after the year started, the provincial systemic tests once again benchmarked our Grades 3, 6 and 9 Mathematics and English proficiencies as significantly higher than their peers, with Grade 6 Maths at 100%. Somewhere mid-year all Covid restrictions were lifted and so did our spirits. Our teachers picked up where we left off and in no time the robotics, soccer and fencing teams qualified to compete outside of Cape Town, our junior school performed in the Shakespeare festival, our donors and supporters participated in the Virtual Fitness Challenge and on Heritage Day, our five Simunye Schools crossed the wealth divide to spend a day making potjiekos together. Nothing, not even the extremely disruptive loadshedding was going to stop us as we ended the year in style with our first in-person Special Assembly in two years. Shortly on its heels came the news that our matrics once again had a

100% pass rate, 89% with a Bachelor’s pass. Our 26 academic distinctions (two with 90%!) wrapped up the year with a big bow.

In 2023, we plan to pay specific attention internally to building agency and higher-order thinking skills in our children while we remain an intentionally ITenabled school. Youth Bridge, our 10X intervention in youth unemployment, saw its first pilot concluded. This will pave the way for the 2023 launch, where we will focus on capitalising on our strong partnerships to unlock the potential in our country’s youth. We have to teach more youth to fish, and we know how to do that.

We remain grateful to all our donors, volunteers and supporters and we are excited to share with you that the time has come to have another Christel House in South Africa! We look forward to approach old and new friends in 2023 to establish a framework within which this can happen as soon as possible to pave the way for more children to have a seat at the table of life.

Adri Marais, Chief Executive Officer Christel House SA