SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS

Founded in South Africa in 2017, School of Hard Knocks (SOHK) is part of an international non-profit network operating in the UK, New Zealand and South Africa that uses rugby to connect traumatised young people to child-friendly psycho-social support to help improve their well-being, perform better in school and exit school with a positive plan for the future.

SOHK currently delivers programmes to approximately 200 teenagers from violent communities at five under-resourced government schools in Cape Town.

Their research-based curriculum has enjoyed significant success, and showed that the programme’s interventions have contributed to an increase in personal responsibility and wellbeing, and an improvement in behaviour among the majority of students in just three terms.