Jade needs High School Education

Jade is a beautiful, intelligent young lady of 12. She has been through a lot of hardships throughout her young life. Her dad was murdered when she was 4 years old and her mom was unable to look after her and her 3 siblings financially. All four siblings were placed into foster care. The youngest one was placed with me. The siblings were able to see each other around twice a year but it was hard for Jade to not be with them permanently. She was reasonably happy with her foster family, even though the parents were an older couple with three grown sons.

Then, two years ago, Jade's foster mom and dad divorced, leaving her with foster mom. This lady started neglecting Jade terribly - going after men and forcing this young child to fend for herself, especially on weekends. The child had to find people by herself where she could spend weekends away from foster mom, while the mom went out with men and entertained them at her house. The siblings got to see even less of Jade than usual, because she was all over the place with different families every weekend, living out of a suitcase on a permanent basis. The foster dad couldn't help much, because he was somehow barred from seeing/helping her by the foster mom and her divorce settlement.

Foster mom then decided she found the love of her life and left her job, sold all her belongings and moved to Heidelberg with the new man. Jade had no choice but to follow. The mom commuted from Heidelberg to Pretoria to bring Jade to school. On weekends she still had to find people to stay with herself. During the weeks, she had a terrible time with the mom's new man - he was exceptionally strict with her, to the extent of abuse. She was not allowed anything, including reading, which is her favourite pastime. Mom has in the meantime again moved after the new man to a very small town in Limpopo. She made no effort to include Jade in her plans and some random people from her school took care of her. She wanted to place Jade in a residential school in North West, so as not to "deal" with her during school terms.

When lockdown started, Jade begged me to come and visit and during her two week stay with us and all these stories came out. Because she is my foster child's' older sister, I applied for an emergency removal of the child. Of course this took extremely long to happen because nothing functioned during lockdown.

At the beginning of this month, we were successful in removing Jade from her sadly failed foster care and took her in as well. We are very glad to have her with us and to give her a stable life, together with her youngest sister.

In South Africa, it is a whole process to apply via the Department of Education to get a child enrolled in a High School for Gr 8. Jade was accepted to a High School in the then area she stayed in, but it is very far from our home and it will prove near impossible to get her to school every day. We've tried our best to get her enrolled in a public school close to us, but the waiting lists are so long, that we are not successful in doing that.

The next available school, is a private school and they are prepared to take her in, but the fees are very high and it will be difficult financially for us to pay these fees. The registration fees are R 5,000 and then we still need to buy her a uniform, stationery and a school bag. The monthly school fees are R 6,500 per month over 11 months. The school fees will also increase during the month of June 2021. This makes the total school fees for the year R 76,500. We've applied for some financial relief from the school, but so far it doesn't look like it will happen

Are there any "angels" out there who will be prepared to assist us in giving this child a good education in a good school, where she will be accepted for her background and difficulties and where she will at last have some stability to grow and bloom? There will be only 11 children in her class and she will get all the individual attention she needs. She will be able to grow to her full potential, where as, in contrast, she might "get lost" in a big public school with up to 45 children in a class.

Please help us help Jade to get a fantastic education? Any assistance will be greatly appreciated.