Roger Federer sits in on a class at a Namibian primary school

Swiss tennis superstar Roger Federer visited a primary school in Namibia ahead of his charity match in South Africa. 

The record 20-time Grand Slam champion was in Namibia on Wednesday, two days before The Match in Africa. 

Per the press release, Roger spent time in one ECD center and one primary school in order to get a personal idea about the effectiveness of the School Readiness Initiative. 

The Swiss experienced lessons in class, attended a learning group of educators and teachers and spoke to parents. 

Also, the 38-year-old met with the country's President as well as other important representatives of the Government in order to exchange on the importance of quality early childhood education.

The Roger Federer Foundation has a clear goal of helping those in need and the foundation has been especially active in Africa.

Per the press release, the Roger Federer Foundation with a regional office in South Africa is conducting programmes in six countries in Southern Africa (Botswana, Malawi, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa) plus Switzerland. Since its start the foundation has spent 750 million NAD for its education initiatives conducted in 7000 primary school and preschools. Over 1.5 million children have been benefitting from a better quality in education due to our engagement over the last 16 years.

The school readiness initiative in Namibia was also described in the press release: Since 2014 the Roger Federer Foundation is investing in early childhood education in Namibia in partnership with its local partners namely Lifeline Childline, Churches Alliance for Orphans and Women`s Action for Development in Namibia. Currently, a NAD 90 million national-wide School Readiness Initiative is running, a seven-year programme jointly funded by Foundation Botnar targeting to reach 3,000 learning institutions in order to give poor and vulnerable Namibian young learners a good start into formal education. The School Readiness Initiative is establishing processes for joint responsibility of all on the ground on immediate improvements for early learners; scaling up access to age-appropriate early learning facilities, be it in primary schools or temporarily in private Early Childhood Development centres and building capacity and enhancing the competency of educators and early grades teachers on early learning, in particular the methodology of learning through play, school readiness and the sensitive phase of transition into primary school.

Since its start, the School Readiness programme commenced in 2018 with a pilot project which was successfully implemented in 204 learning institutions in the four regions of Khomas, Oshana, Kavango East and Kavango West until December 2019. The programme has provided access to quality early learning to over 10,000 pre-primary class learners, trained over 390 educators and teachers using a tablet-based school readiness and transition course; established a peer to peer mentorship mechanism for enhancing capacity of educators, pre-primary class and Grade 1 teachers; mobilised parents and communities to improve the play and learning environments for learners in ECD centres and developed Applications and tools that helps educators and teachers to assess children on a continuous basis and support their attainment of developmental milestones among others.

from Tennis World USA https://ift.tt/2GW2ifD