Reports

Committee selection report

We as class 5AMNO conducted a committee selection whereby we had to

choose the people who where to lead us throughout our project. The
voting was conducted within Gantsi Senior School at the B block in
classroom B2, and this voting happened on the 21st of January. We had to
choose a chairperson who will be the leader or operations, the deputy
chairperson to help out in case the chairperson needs assistance any how,
the secretary who was to write every important detail during meeting we
had as a class, a treasurer who kept the money we made during the
selling of goods and other fundraising activities and we also had to choose
two additional members who’s jobs were to help out during fundraising
activities. Carrying out the voting was done using the secret ballot method
whereby we were given a piece of paper and write down the candidates
we wanted to choose, once we wrote down who we wanted to vote for, the
votes will be counted and the person with the highest number of votes
wins but if they had the same number of votes we were to vote again until
one person won the voting. A few helpers namely Modisa and Christinah
helped with the voting by one of them giving us the papers for voting a
candidate and collecting them while the other counted the votes and told
us who won the voting of each category. Although the committee selection
was carried out successfully with each roles having its own person, we had
a few problems that we encountered and one of them was that students
were not cooperating. Some students refused to help with small tasks like
wiping the board so that we can start selecting new candidates and it was
a waste of our time since majority of the students refused, other problems
we encountered was that students did not take part in voting, and this
disrupted the whole voting process because everyone’s opinion is needed
when doing the committee selection. However, these problems we solved
relatively easy as one student willingly volunteered to wipe the board and
some progress could be made and some words of inspiration was given to
students who did not want to take part in the voting by our teacher and
her words enlightened to start voting.

Class contribution

Interview

We as class 5AMNO conducted research about the challenges faced by the

Gantsi Senior Community. This research started on the 20th of January
and ended on the 24th of January meaning it took an entire week to
complete the research due to certain challenges we faced while
conducting the research. We divided ourselves while conducting the
research whereby two people had to go around the whole school looking
for respondents to interview. Our job was to interview different people of
the Gantsi Senior community namely the students, teachers and non-
teaching stuff as they were all part of the community and opinions were
needed from all of them for us to know some challenges the school faces.
The interview was one of the simplest methods to use as only two
students interviewed some people, one group interviewed students, the
other interviewed teachers and the remaining ones interviewed non-
teaching staff. Challenges were faced while carrying out the research
which include unfavorable weather conditions, language barriers between
the interviewer and the respondents, lack of cooperation from some
students and teachers, limited time and lack of ideas from respondents.
They easily solved these challenges by translating English to Setswana,
limited time was solved by asking for permission from teachers to carry
out the interview during study time, lack of cooperation was solved by
moving on to the next people to answer, lack of ideas was solved by
asking more questions and moving on to the next respondents, we used
umbrellas to help out with the harsh weather conditions. Once the
research was done, we found the following problems:

 Lack of funds to buy software and equipment

 Abuse of drugs and alcohol by students
 Lack of stationary at the art lab
 Shortage of cleaning material
 Shortage of circuits in hostels
 Lack of punctuality students
 Dirty dining hall
 Indiscipline of students
 Poor nutrition
 Littering
 Unattractive school surrounding
 Moth and mosquitoes in classrooms
The interview research had the advantage of providing the richest
data in terms of depth and personal connection, they allow for clarification and
correction of misunderstandings, they help develop rapport between interviewer and
interviewee, and they allow for collection of fresh, primary information through
questions.

Table of Respondents
Respondents Number of students
 Students 8
Teachers 2
Non-teaching stuff 3
Total 13

Observation

 We as class 5AMNO carried out a research about some problems that may
be faced in the Gantsi Senior School Community. The research was done
using the observation method for gathering data and this method was the
fastest one among the others we used because it only took just two days
to finish. Because of how simple and fast it was we only had one group
which consisted of 5 or 6 people only and these 5 people were Christinah,
Legae, Sandra, Ogone, One and Tsholofelo. In this small group each
member decided to divide themselves by each person observing certain
areas of the school. Christinah went to go observe the dining hall, Legae
went to go observe the Block A classrooms, Sandra went to go observe the
Block B classrooms, Ogone went to go observe the students, teachers, and
non-teaching behaviors, Tsholofelo went to go observe the Science labs
and One went to go observe the whole Art Block and Agric Block. Their
jobs were fairly easy as they only just had to look at stuff and note them
down anything important that the school needs but although this method
was the easiest, they encountered a few challenges being that there was
biasness, Ethical concerns, time constraints, data overload, environmental
distractions, logistical challenges. These problems were easily solved by
following ethical guidelines, time constraints were solved by having
efficient time management, data overloads were solved by utilizing tools
and software for efficient time management, environmental distractions
were solved by reducing distractions by choosing quitter times and the
logistical challenges were solved by developing protocols for details and
accurate documentation. Once those minor challenges were solved they
then came together during study time to gather all the data the could
record and the problems that they saw that the school was facing are as
follows:
 Bullying
 Low teacher-student ratio
 Lack of resources
 Absentees
 Teacher burnouts
 Discipline issues
 Infrastructure problems
 Mental health
 Negative peer pressure
 Poor nutrition

Seeing as how they were able to easily gather so much information in a short
time, this method of research had the advantage of it capturing natural behavior
from students compared to the other research methods like interview and
questionnaire whereby some members of the community had to fake their
behaviors, another advantage is that it gives First-Hand Data meaning that you
get direct, reliable data instead of relying on second-hand reports and it provides
Contextual Understanding meaning that observation provides a deeper
understanding of the environment and circumstances influencing actions.

Brainstorming

We as class 5AMNO class doing development studies at Gantsi Senior

Secondary School brainstormed to identify problems faced by Gantsi
Senior Community. We identified the following problems during the
research:

 School littering
 Shortage of teachers
 Indiscipline
 Lack of resources
 Teenage pregnancy
 Vandalism
 Insufficient funding
 Bullying and violence
 Shortage of food
 Low academic performance
 Poor nutrition
 Low teacher student ratio
 Abuse of drugs and alcohol
 Teacher burns out
 Mental health problems
 Negative peer pressure
 Shortage of cleaning material
 Shortage of circuits in hostels
 Late coming of students
 Shortage of cleaning material
 Unattractive school surrounding
 Moths and mosquitoes in classrooms
 Low academic performance
 Infrastructure problems

Topic Selection

We as class 5AMNO selected five topics stating the problems faced by the
school

Problems identified Project topics/solution

1. Unattractive school Promoting environmental hygiene
surrounding and sanitation in Gantsi senior
 2. Teenage pregnancy Educating students on sex
education
3. Poor nutrition Growing vegetables for Gantsi
Senior
4. Abuse of drugs and alcohol Raising awareness of alcohol and
drug abuse through different
means
5. Vandalism Repairing vandalized school
property

We also had to take into consideration that the topics we were to select
should done using the schools:

 Resources
 Skills
 Labor
 Capital/fund/affordability
 Time

Once we finished with the topic selection we moved on to the next stage
of our project

Topic Discussion

We as class 5AMNO Development studies students of Gantsi

Senior had topic discussion on the 4th of February 2025. The
main aim of this activity was to select the five topics and
discuss their benefits to the school and the challenges of
choosing them. The selected topics were:
-Promoting environmental hygiene and sanitation in Gantsi
senior
-Teaching students on sex education
- Growing vegetables for Gantsi senior
-Raising awareness on drugs and alcohol abuse
-Repairing vandalized school properties
PROMOTING ENVIRONMENTAL HYGIENE AND SANITATION
IN GANSTSI SENIOR
We choose this topic looking at how much of an impact it would benefit
the entire school mainly because our school was full of grass that needed
to be cleared, a lot of litter around the school which really made the
school look untidy as if the school was a zoo. Promoting environmental
hygiene and sanitation would benefit the school as it would encourage our
student to keep themselves clean and it would reduce the spread of
diseases through litter. This topic is relatively simple because the only
problem we could encounter when doing it was the unfavorable weather
conditions such as the having to pick up litter around the school during
the bright sunny day.

Teaching Students on sex education

Teaching students about sex education would be very beneficial to the
school because it has a high rate of pregnant students which also causes
them to drop out of school due to them not knowing about sex education.
This topic would also benefit the students also as they would learn about
the different contraceptives that can maybe in future help them to
prevent unwanted pregnancies and do a proper family planning. One
problem we could encounter when teaching students about sex education
is the lack of resources like a microphone and speaker to talk to a huge
audience.

Growing vegetables for Gantsi Senior

Gantsi Senior Secondary School has a huge shortage of food as they can
sometimes improvise by cooking beans on days like Wednesday when we
should be eating chicken and rice. Some students are not able to eat that
kind of food because they may be allergic to them so hence growing
vegetables can help those kinds of students to be able to eat something
that can satisfy them for the meantime. A problem we could encounter
while carrying out this activity is that there is a very small space in the
school while there is huge number of students in the school which leads to
low supply of the food to meet the students demand due to the school
having a small place for growing vegetables

Raising awareness on drug and alcohol abuse

Smoking in Gantsi Senior is at a very high rate. Students who smoke are
usually naughty and they most of them tend to fail a lot due to these
drugs disrupting their brain development. If we were to raise awareness
about drugs and alcohol abuse, it would make a big impact to the school
as those students would be able to follow school rules by putting on
proper school uniform and it could possibly increase the school pass
percentage. However, students tend to either have an addiction to these
drugs and alcohol or not having interest on learning about the dangers it
can bring to them which maybe be a problem when carrying out the
activity.
Repairing school vandalized property
Vandalism in school is a common thing around the students of Gantsi
Senior as they vandalize as a way of gaining popularity by writing their
names on walls. If this problem was to be addressed students will be able
to have a clean and tidy learning environment, it would enhance the
student’s safety if broken windows are fixed as they tend to cause injuries
to students who are not careful of their surrounding and it would prevent
further vandalism because leaving vandalized property unrepaired may
encourage more destructive behavior. A major problem we could
encounter while carrying out the activity is the lack of funds to buy paint
and paint brushes to repair some of the vandalism around the school.

Voting for the final topic

On the 7th of February 2025, we as class 5AMNO Development

studies students of Gantsi senior conducted the activity of
voting for the final topic.
The table below shows the number of votes for the chosen
topics.
Topics Number of votes
1. Promoting environmental Yes
hygiene and sanitation in 14/15 1/15
Gantsi senior
2. Teaching students on sex
education
3. Making a vegetable
garden for Gantsi senior
4. Raising awareness on
alcohol and drug abuse
5. Repairing vandalized
school properties

Promoting environmental hygiene and sanitation in

Gantsi Senior
Aims
 To raise funds
 To beautify the school
 To promote a conducive learning environment
Objectives
 To sell items
 To pick up litter
 To clean dining hall
 To paint the school wall
 To prune trees
 To clear school surrounding
 To instruct students about environmental hygiene and
sanitation in the school
Cleaning of the dinning hall

We as class 5AMNO did an activity as part of the development studies

project

Background information

History of Gantsi

Our project was conducted in Gantsi Senior Secondary School in Meriting

ward within Gantsi township which is Ghanzi Region in Botswana. Gantsi is
a town in the middle of the Kalahari Desert in the western part of the
Republic of Botswana in Southern Africa. Gantsi township consists of eight
wards namely, Kabakae, Molapo, Bosele, KhuraKhura, Kgaphamadi,
Morama and White city. Each ward has a Kgoasana. The chief of Gantsi is
Kgosi Rankho. The languages in Gantsi include Sekgaladi, Sesarwa,
Seherero, Afrikaans, English and Setswana. The largest ethnic group found
in Gantsi is Bakgalagadi but the first group to settle in Gantsi Region are
the Basarwa (San). The Gantsi itself is divided into two constituencies
namely Gantsi North and Gantsi South. The member of parliament for
Gantsi South is Honorable Motsami Motsami while the member of
parliament for Gantsi Norrth is ......... . Gantsi township has a primay
hospital, shopping malls, three primary schools which are Kabakae,
Gantsi, Kgaphamadi, a private school called Pioneer Academy, a junior
secondary school called Ithekeng, a senior school called Gantsi Senior and
several hotels such as Kalahari Arms Hotel and Tautona. During the 2011
census there were 12167 people living in the town with another 861
nearby. Gantsi has a shopping areas such as Spar, Choppies, Sefalana,
Shoprite and food stays such as Kalahari Arms Hotel and Tautona Hotel.
Gantsi is primarily a farming community that supplies the Botswana Meat
Comission with most of the required meat. The town is growing as many
Afrikaans farmers as possible from South Africa come to farm here, the
tourist and game reserves in the region are Central Kalahari Reserve,
Deception valley, Ghanzi Craft, Kgalagadi Trans Frontier Park, Khutse
Game reserve, Kuru Museum, and cultural centre