18 Aug 2024

Golden Faith day care and preschool is a dividend of hard work and resilience for 35-year-old Ms Wame Matsime.

Born and raised in Kanye, Matsime was left an orphan when she lost her parents at the age of 5.

“I was raised by my mum’s friend, Ms Bushe Masu until completion of school. She gave me the opportunity to live a decent life.”

Despite being a victim of circumstances, through her enduring power of hope, Ms Matsime survived all odds until she saw light at the end of the tunnel.

It was 2018 when Ms Matsime was fresh from attaining a Diploma in Accounting from Gaborone Institute of Professional Studies (GIPS) when she sought to pursue further studies and she approached a certain Mr Abudullah to help facilitate her to go and study abroad.

“His advice was that there would always be a window to study further while I am still operating a business.”

She heeded Mr Abdullah’s advice and decided to venture into preschool day care in Kanye, but the savings from tertiary school that she used to finance her business by buying equipment for   preschool were not enough.

She said it was Mr Abdullah again who came to rescue by helping her to buy some equipment for   preschool and paid rent for three months. “That was the grace of God.”

Unfortunately, the place she rented failed to meet the set council requirements for a preschool and all the rental money and expenses for renovations went down the drain.

She said she then learned that there was a home suitable for preschool in Letlhakeng that she could rent and she embarked on a journey to see the place and meet the owner. The rest is history.

She went back again to Abdullah to ask for help  and she helped her by paying rent for three months and financed renovation of  the place.

The preschool operation started in 2019 with  five pupils  and  one employee, who was  a teacher and a cleaner  at the same time, while Ms Matsime was manning  administrative  affairs  and the kitchen.

“We would go around the village distributing flyers, which really helped as we came from five to 10 pupils, then from 19 to 25 pupils until we reached 38 and more employees were hired.”

In 2020, the same year that her proposal was funded through the Ministry of Youth, Gender, Sports and Culture, COVID-19 struck   and her business was not spared.

She was forced to close shop for a year even though her business was funded with 98 000 through Youth Development Fund.

As lessons resumed a year later, she said the school had nine pupils and some employees decided to abandon her and stand on their own. Thus they poached some pupils from her preschool as they had a database of all contacts.

The Ministry of Youth, Gender, Sport and Culture  funding, she said  gave her business a face lift as she managed to buy five computers and 30 modern tables, while the other portion was used for administrative matters.

The fund, she said, helped her to offer services that are not offered by her competitors especially the mostly sought after skills in information technology.

She says plans to build a swimming pool and introduce swimming lessons are at an advanced stage.   

She said now the school has 43 pupils with a staff complement of seven employees.

Golden faith day care, located at Modimo ward in Letlhakeng admits pupils from the age of two to six years.

Matsime said lack of own plot made it difficult to expand and avoid rentals.

She also explains that some parents claim that there are some government primary schools in Letlhakeng that do not admit children coming straight from private preschool.

They say they are therefore compelled to take their children to spend at least a year at public preschool before being admitted to Standard One, which negatively affects her business. ENDS