Next week Mike Butler and Roger Cooper will join 300 Mellon Educate volunteers who are travelling to Cape Town to renovate and improve facilities at 3 schools in Khayelitsha, South Africa’s second largest township and an area of great deprivation. In just under a week, new classrooms, kitchens, a science laboratory, playgrounds and sports facilities will be built and upgraded benefitting a total of 3,650 learners currently attending the schools – Sosebenza Primary School, Usasazo High School and Sobambisana Primary School.

Many of this year’s Building Blitz volunteers are from large corporations based in the UK and Ireland including Oracle, Google, Linklater’s LLP, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and McDonald Butler.

Each volunteer has personally raised approximately 4000 euros ZAR 60,000 to participate in the organisation’s annual Building Blitz, a sizeable proportion of which goes towards building materials for the schools as well as towards Mellon Educate’s school based programme which commences in each school post building works and in partnership with both the school management and the Western Cape Education Department. Mellon Educate provides holistic support over a 5-yr period and thereafter advisory mentorship and guidance.