About us
Welcome to Education for Democracy in South Africa
We hope you enjoy your visit to the EDSA website. If you would like more information about any of the educational projects that we support in the black townships around Cape Town and in the rural areas of the Western Cape please do get in touch with us. If you would like to make a donation towards this work then we, and thousands of young people in the townships, thank you in advance.
EDSA is a small Oxfordshire-based charity which has been in existence since 1990 including during the desperate years of apartheid in South Africa. EDSA developed through a strong link with educationalists working within the Cape Town area, who were striving to ensure that as many disadvantaged black South Africans as possible had access to education and training. This is as important today as it was when EDSA first started to work in partnership with SA projects.
In those early years much of our work was to fundraise to support students through a bursary system. This allowed a small number of them to pursue further training under extreme circumstances in the hope that they would one day be able to take their part in developing democratic processes in their country.
The apartheid education system was deliberately structured to ensure that black people would not be able to compete with their white compatriots on the job market. The grim consequences are evident everywhere in the new South Africa which is committed to providing equal opportunities for all, but through lack of education the overwhelming majority of black people are still excluded from meaningful participation in the economic life of the country, and the economy itself is suffering an acute shortage of skilled workers.
Completing a map work assignment at Winter School
EDSA's partner in Cape Town is ASSET (the Association for Educational Transformation) which recognises the need to work more intensively to support the main stream school system. They began their now renowned programme of Saturday schools and holiday workshops in the 80s, before apartheid ended, and these programmes continue to make an enormous difference to the pass rate of participating students. EDSA has worked in partnership with ASSET to fund and develop this extra support. It is an ongoing fact that those students achieving top marks in the matriculation examination at the end of each year will have attended the ASSET/EDSA programmes.
EDSA also has developing partnerships with other small South African NGOs (non governmental organisations) some of whom we have encouraged to get off the ground. EDSA is currently supporting two other important children and youth projects - one urban and one rural. These are SAMLA based in Guguletu near to Cape Town and Net Vir Pret based in Barrydale in the Overberg area of the Western Cape.
In recent years EDSA has received funding from a number of key UK agencies who have all been very supportive of the work in South Africa, including Comic Relief and Jephcott Foundation.
EDSA Patrons are: Professor Tim Brighouse; J M Coetzee; Fairport Convention; The Rt Revd and Rt Hon.The Lord Harries of Pentregarth; Sir Anthony Sher and Janet Suzman.
The EDSA Trustees are: Ann Harries Brown (Chair and founding Trustee); Ann Applegate (Treasurer); and Professor Gary Lock.
The EDSA Committee is: John Applegate; Niall Murphy; Anthea Head; David Brodie OBE; Val Webster;
The Director for EDSA is Judy Brown.
EDSA is Registered Charity No 1003795.