Magnet Theatre's Training and Youth Upliftment Trust Granted 18A Status

Cape Town's innovative Magnet Theatre has successfully applied for and been granted 18A Status for their new trust: The Magnet Training and Youth Upliftment Trust. This means that all donations to the trust are tax deductible.

The object of the trust is to train and to provide skills to needy school-going and unemployed youth in South Africa in areas and communities that have little or no access to innovative educational programs with the purpose of enabling the youth to obtain employment. With the help and support of the public, Magnet Theatre is hoping to be able to continue contributing to the transformation of young people's lives through skills training and empowerment as we have been doing over the past 28 years.

Magnet Theatre believes that we are have a responsibility to develop a more just, free and peaceful society. To this end, the company runs: the Culture Gangs Project, for 150 township youth, creating gangs of youth committed to culture and not to crime, encouraging creative and imaginative play and thinking and developing new theatre productions; the Cederberg Community Arts Development and Farm Project (including the Clanwilliam Arts Project) for over 700 children in the remote rural communities of the Cederberg, running skills workshops and after school programs; and the full time Training and Job Creation Program, a dedicated 2-year professional training program for 20 township youth, bridging the gap between the townships, the university and the theatre profession as a whole.

So far, from their programs Magnet Theatre has managed to facilitate the entrance of 15 first time university attendees in their families into university courses, eight of whom have graduated and 6 who are still in the system. 82% of the remaining graduates have been successfully employed in the theatre industry working for some big names in the business including Handspring Puppet Company, Isango Ensemble, The Baxter Theatre Centre and the Artscape Theatre Centre. Many of them have won awards at the Zabalaza/Baxter Theatre Festival and Thando Doni, a 2011 Magnet graduate, has been nominated for Naledi and Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards. 2013 graduate Lwanda Sindaphi has been named one of the top ten poets in Africa by CNN and Badilisha Poetry X-Change and four other graduates of that class have been re-employed with Magnet and are travelling internationally with the award winning TREE/BOOM/UMTHI. Others are creating their own new theatre productions which are touring Cape Town venues and to Johannesburg.

Magnet Theatre is grateful for any contribution made to the transformation and development of the young people that the company supports. All dontayions made will go towards Magnet Theatre's youth development programs and further information is available through Nomazamo Matdolana on 021 4483436. Like Magnet Theatre's Facebook page to be updated on the progress of all of their projects, and visit the company's official website at www.magnettheatre.co.za.