Cailey Jones

Cailey Jones’s passion for education has taken her from the classrooms of Durham College (DC) to Johannesburg, South Africa.

After graduating from the college’s Early Childhood Education program in 2010, she found herself headed to South Africa for a one-year volunteer opportunity to work with Botshabelo, a non for profit that helps underprivileged children.

While she originally applied to work with infants, Cailey’s ECE training made her an ideal candidate to help with establishing the Urban Kids Educentre (UKE), to provide quality preschool education to low-income students. Eight years later she is still living there, now working as the principal of UKE managing a team of 13 employees, teaching 120 students.

She is also using her skills to work towards securing funding for those UKE employees to pursue their own additional education. With a goal to establish partnerships with local universities to have students studying Occupational Therapy, Child Psychology, Art Therapy, Speech Pathology intern at UKE, Cailey hopes it will become a resource centre not only for its students but for other preschools as well.