Any parent of school-age children will be only too familiar with the amount of stationery they require: not only the pens and pencils and rulers, etc, but also the blank workbooks for each subject. Increasingly the State is requiring learners to provide their own such equipment. For children in rural communities or more remote towns, this presents financial and logistical difficulties. Many can simply not get to a stationery store, and the costs there are often higher than for the same products in large cities, where the greater demand and competi

"The objective of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives." - Robert Maynard Hut

When educators from schools along the Absa Cape Epic route highlighted these needs on behalf of their learners, the Big Tree Foundation stepped in. Now a sponsor, in the form of a global stationery supplier will be providing packages filled with the basic stationery requirements - notepads, pens, pencils, rulers - to be distributed to the communities that have the greatest need for them. In 2008, 300 such packs

Implementation:
Headmasters will send motivations to the Big Tree Foundation, outlining the needs of the children at their schools. A panel will assess these before making the donations to the educators, who will be responsible for the distribution of the stationery packs.

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