The Rosdien Desai Legacy Library will be launched on Thursday, 8 October at Heideveld Primary School in Heideveld.

The library is named after the former principal who retired in March this year after 40 years as a teacher and principal.

The launch, held in conjunction with The Bookery, will be a special occasion celebrating the establishment of the library as well as honouring Desai’s legacy and his contribution to the school and the community.

“Although being retired, the bookery at the school is where I’ll spend my time. Learners will be able to hold hardcopies in their hands instead of being on their phones all the time. They will also be able to listen to music, rhymes and poetry in the media room to get them involved and cater for their different interests,” he says.

Legacy Honoured

In his 40 years as an educator, he says what was so special about education was to see how learners were progressing and doing well in life.

If you read a book it takes you to places far from where you currently are and expands your vision and prompts you to travel and explore in the future.

“Whether you are an educator on the Cape Flats or the leafy suburbs you must still have the love and passion for being a teacher and dealing with children. Children differ, and children coming from the poor socio-economic areas experience a lot of trauma, violence and gangsterism and you have to build resilience in these learners.

A lot of these learners need good role models, because they don’t have any aspirations. Where they live the role models they have are not the ones you want them to have in life.

“As a teacher on the Cape Flats you have to expose them to a better way of life than to what they used to on a daily basis,” Desai says.

Building Resilience

He believes to teach on the Cape Flats you must know the learners face adversity on a daily basis, you need to transform them, inculcate values, show them there is a better way of life, that they can do better.

“What they’ve done at Heideveld Primary is create leadership in the foundation phase to have prefects, mini-prefects and in the senior phase junior prefects with the idea that they become leaders now and in the future and play meaningful roles in the communities they live in,” Desai says.

Heideveld Primary is a well resourced school and the learners are fortunate because they receive the best and are given technology in their classrooms to one day take their rightful place in their community. If they one day seek jobs then they can fit in and do well in their jobs.

The Rosdien Desai Legacy Library will provide access to a wide range of information resources, including books, academic journals, e-books, multimedia, and digital databases, supporting both formal education and self-directed learning.

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