Education is not preparation for life; it is life itself
John Dewey

A large part of the Foundations mission to create sustainable nature based livelihoods in our community is accomplished through empowerment of Grootbos staff and their families. The first step in this process is a sound education. Many of the staff were forced to leave school prematurely in order to provide for their families. We would like to give them opportunities to further their education as well as provide their children with the chance of obtaining secondary and tertiary education.

We have found that many of the guests at Grootbos share this feeling and often want to get directly involved with the upliftment of individual employees. Thus we have established an Education Fund within the Foundation to facilitate this and make sure that the funding for education, books, school clothing and other necessities is available to the children over the long term. We feel that the formalised management and allocation of this funding is important as we are well aware of the pitfalls of wide ranging donations not going to the people that they were meant for who need them most.