Cape Town - After four months of being out of school, Laurence Ntumba took it upon herself to get the children who form part of the refugees in Greenmarket Square, Cape Town, into the habit of reading.
Ntumba, 41, said she realised that the children had not gone to school in months and as a volunteer teacher she could not sit back and watch their education decline.
"I volunteered to help the children with reading and maths, as seeing them going around doing nothing - and with all the tension going around, fighting between the parents and this and that - I thought that they would grow up thinking that that's the lifestyle, that that's the good thing to do," the mother-of-four boys said while surrounded by her 15 pupils.
Ntumba said that a woman from the Netherlands went to the group on Sunday and asked what they needed. She said they needed books so that she could help the children with reading.
Video: Courtney Africa/ African News Agency (ANA)
"I don't want them [the children] to lose the habit of reading stories.... They must at least know the basics of reading and language."
She said she assisted as a volunteer tutor at one of the schools in Cape Town.
Her lessons run for about 30 minutes daily and end with the children getting homework for the next day.
The group, which according to reports includes almost 300 children, have been in Greenmarket Square since late 2019 after the City of Cape Town was tasked with providing temporary alternative accommodation in order to give home affairs time to conduct a verification process.
At the time, the city said it had no housing available.