Support a Teacher*   $72,000  (x4 @ $18,000 ea)
The most recent and pressing challenge that Bethesda has faced is the financial stability of Bethesda itself. Bethesda is structured so that JCA school fees helps to cover the costs of childcare. In order to do this, however, the school needs to be profitable. Over the last 5 years, x2 unforeseen events had a major negative impact on the school’s finances.

Firstly, in 2018, the South African Council of Educators (SACE) began refusing to certify foreign missionary teachers as accredited teachers in SA. This directly led to Bethesda losing x4 funded missionary teachers, who had to be replaced with salaried South African teachers. That alone had an impact on our budget of more than R1 million per year or +/-10% of our total budget.

Secondly, the Covid19 pandemic and the lockdowns that went with it, has had an extremely negative effect on the local economy. Due to massive job losses, and the economy that has not recovered sufficiently, many parents were forced to remove their children from JCA, as they can no longer afford the tuition. This year alone we have seen an enrolment shortfall of around 40 students. This alone amounts to another +/-R1 million in lost income to Bethesda this year, meaning that we’ve seen our total budget being negatively affected by roughly +/-20% over the last few years.

Enabling Next Steps / Independent Living Fund    $30,000
This part of the Christmas project is for helping us enable our children who are moving out of high school into a more independent living situation. This fund allows us to help them make individualised plans and wise decisions on further education such as university/skills training, apply for bursaries/scholarships; pay registration fees for study, get their driver’s licences, meet basic food/housing needs while studying, and the like.

Bethesda has x7 children who will be graduating from high school in the next 3 years so these expenses will grow and these costs are not generally considered in the child care grant system. Once the children reach 18, there are very few resources to make these important next steps.