Campaign gives school a fresh coat of paint

Robinvale High principal Vaghn Murray, left, and Build it Table View manager Rheyno Strydom.

Cape Community Newspapers (CCN) has teamed up with hardware store Build it Table View to freshen up the bathrooms at Robinvale High School in Atlantis.

The campaign, “Communities that Care”, uses outreach projects to help community organisations.

This month, Tabletalk, one of CCN’s 15 newspapers, and Build it decided Robinvale High’s bathrooms needed some TLC.

Rheyno Strydom, manager of Build it Table View, has built a relationship with the school through soccer tournaments.

Mr Strydom hired a professional painter to redo the boys’ and girls’ bathrooms at the school, covering up graffiti.

He chose a washable paint so any future graffiti could be removed easily and did repairs to the walls where needed.

Principal Vaughn Murray said the project was a fantastic idea and much needed.

“We want to thank Build it. They could have chosen any other school, but they chose us,” he said.

The school has 1273 pupils and 45 staff, including 38 teachers.

Mr Murray added one extra classrooms this year for children who had not been placed at schools. He had wanted to keep pupil numbers to 1 200 but said he had not been prepared to do that while letting others sit at home.

Robinvale High’s school fees are R450 a year, but only about 60% of parents pay it.

Despite that, Mr Murray said: “A lack of funding has never been an excuse for us. We have taken responsibility for our own progression.

“We are doing well at all levels because of the management and set-up we create at the school.”

Chantel Erfort, editor of Cape Community Newspapers which publishes Tabletalk and its sister titles, said CCN has always worked very closely with the communities it serves and aimed to contribute to the community’s upliftment wherever possible.

“We are thrilled that through partnerships like this one, Tabletalk has been able to work with one of its advertisers to make a real change in the lives of those who need it,” she said.

“We hope that this small contribution makes learning – and teaching – a more positive experience for the pupils and staff of Robinvale High.”

Sandy Naude, CEO of CCN, said: “The objective of our initiative is to focus on sponsorship programmes, with our commercial clients often as project partners, which benefit the communities within the distribution areas of our well-loved titles.”

She said all ‘Communities That Care’ initiatives will carry the project logo when these are shared on all our platforms

Email Deborah Monisi at deborah.monisi@inl.co.za regarding sponsorship and project information.