Before adolescence
arrives — build the
foundation first.
Most teenagers arrive at high school without the emotional and identity tools they need to navigate it. Not because they are incapable — because no one built those tools with them before they needed them. This retreat does that work. Before the storm. When patterns are still forming. When the investment returns the most.
The most strategic window.
Grade 5, 6, and 7 is the last season before everything accelerates. A child at this stage is aware enough to feel the weight of expectation — at home, at school, in their friendships — but young enough that the patterns they are developing are still malleable.
This is the window. Not to fix anything — there is nothing broken. But to give a child the internal tools, the self-knowledge, and the emotional vocabulary they will need when adolescence arrives fully. When we do this work now, teenagers do not encounter high school unprepared. They arrive grounded.
The Pre-Teens Retreat™ is also the only Mayine retreat that runs with a mixed gender cohort. At this developmental stage, girls and boys can share the retreat space. Their emotional experience, while beginning to diverge, is still close enough that a mixed group produces rich, natural conversation — and the work of identity anchoring is equally relevant to both.
Six focus areas. Three days.
The five pillars of the Nomveliso Mbanga Teencoaching™ methodology are woven through every session, every activity, and every conversation. These six focus areas are where that methodology lands for pre-teens specifically.
Grounded in five pillars.
Every session, every activity, and every conversation across the three days is grounded in the Nomveliso Mbanga Teencoaching™ Five Pillars Framework™ — Emotional Intelligence, Intellectual Growth, Indigenous Cultural Identity, Family Dynamics, and Self-Leadership Excellence. ICF CCE-accredited and indigenous-rooted, applied here at the specific developmental stage and context of this retreat stream.
Read the full Five Pillars Framework™ on the main retreat page →
Choose your city and date.
The Pre-Teens Retreat™ runs twice a year in Johannesburg. East London and Durban dates are being confirmed — join the waitlist to be notified first.
What it costs.
Building the foundation
before excellence is tested.
High school will test your child's belief in themselves academically before it tests their knowledge. The students who arrive at Grade 8 already knowing they are capable — already holding a study identity, already understanding what effort produces — are the ones who land well when the academic demands increase.
The Mindset of Academic Excellence™ work at the pre-teen stage is not about marks. It is about the belief system that produces marks. We build the foundation — the habits, the identity, the self-concept of a young person who excels — before the pressure of high school arrives to test it.
The session that makes
the retreat stick.
What happens in the retreat room stays with your child. What happens in the parent session determines whether those changes take root at home. On Day Three, while participants have their final lunch together, parents and guardians gather for a two-hour facilitated session with Nomveliso.
This is not a debrief. It is an equipping. You leave knowing exactly what your child experienced, what came up for them, and — most importantly — what you can do at home to hold the growth that happened here. For pre-teens specifically, this session equips parents with the language and the tools to sustain what the retreat opened — so that the work does not stop at the gate.
Grades 5 – 7 · Girls & Boys
Build the foundation before they need it.
R1,500 priority deposit holds your place · credited toward retreat fee · first 6 deposits per stream receive complimentary R3,500 Post-Retreat Parent Debrief