as many of you will be aware thembalitsha is the xhosa translation of the english words 'new hope' and its amazing to work with a charity where we see new hope being provided in various different ways via our seven projects throughout the western cape.
it's easy to miss the stories of hope that surround us each and everyday so we have made a point of sharing some of these stories around the morning meeting table as we start each day, one as an encouragement of the things that we have seen from the days before and one to challenge us to see the small things that bring hope to those we are working with.
the new hope we see at the village of hope comes in many different forms and expressions, some are obvious as we see the development of the children who are placed with us, be that in their physical, emotional or even spiritual growth or less obvious as we see the slight changes in behaviors of the children that attend our daily sports outreach clubs.
the story of hope that i want to share on this post is one that i saw in the life of a 21 year old boy who has attended our club in the waterworks informal settlement since we set it up over four years ago, he has gone from a child attending the club to a sports mentor who has led the club on his own or with one of his big best friends with little input from us other than him attending our weekly planning sessions.
anyway he is keen to extend his studies at a local university in cape town as he comes to the end of his compulsory education but there is the small issues around the university application process, this might not seem like newsworthy information and something that should take up space on our blog, but just to be able to complete an online application isn't as easy as many of us would think.
take a moment to think about it, to complete an online application you firstly need to have to have access to a computer, which also has to have access to a phone line and most importantly of all have an electricity supply, basic stuff i know but for thousands of children in our town this something that isn't available in their own homes, and that's just for starters as we progressed through the online application form it asked for the young man's email address, again something that we take for granted but for him was a new concept. it was amazing just to be able to help set him up with his own google account, using his full xhosa name to gain a personal address that many of us with familiar european names would only dream of!
there were other highlights that included submitting a postal address, living in a tin shack in an informal settlement with no street names or even postmen is a challenge, what was he to put? this story could run and run from filling in his household income to thinking about transport to and from the university or whether we were too far away for him to be hosted on the campus were real challenges, but we managed to get the application through with the only further small problem of the online payment option (the only option by the way), which needed to be filled in with a credit card, something that this boy and his father don't have so we will have to use mine for the moment and trust he pays me the R100 application fee to cover my cost!
this is a very simple story and only part of his walk, it was indeed one small step for this guy but one giant leap as he seeks to better himself and the prospects of his family and one are where we can see new hope budding in the amazing children we are working with at our sports outreach.
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