Thank You

My name is Tshepiso*. I am a 15-year-old, grade 9 nine girl from a small rural village in Taung called Matsheng.

I grew up in a small loving family with my 2 brothers, 2 sisters, my grandparents and my mother. It was not easy because we lived off social grants so we could not afford many things but life was still nice with my friends and family.

Matsheng is an undeveloped village. There is no proper sanitation. The roads are mostly dirt and  have potholes. Most people do not have proper housing and most people live off child grants from the government.

Many youth have resorted to crime in order to survive because there are no jobs for them. Even though they are done with matric they still cannot find a decent job or go to university because they do not have money for tuition. .Seeing such things at my home village is a motivation for me to finish school and be employed so that I can improve the situation in my community.

One day my uncle got a call from Raise the Children saying that they got my details from my teachers who had helped me apply for their scholarship.I went for interviews and it was so frightening. I remember I cried after an interview because I thought I was bad, but a few days later Mr Smiley and Ms Poloko from the RTC team came to my house to give us the good news and I was so happy because I thought I would never get a scholarship to go to a good school. 

I want to go to one of the best universities in South Africa and continue my studies there. I want to be a chartered accountant or a software engineer because I love working with computers and dealing with finances. 

I want to give people good financial advice because I have seen people around my community misusing their money and buying alcohol with it because they claim to have problems hence they use alcohol as coping mechanism for their problems. 

I also want to build a community recreational center so that children can go there after school because they tend to resort to crime and using substances because they have nothing to do after school so they hang out with bad company and they end up doing wrong things in order to fit in.

I would like to say thank you to RTC for offering me this opportunity to be in one of the best schools in South Africa and for being one of their scholar. Thank you for the amazing tutors, teacher fellow and my mentor Ms Thando. Without you coming to my rescue I would probably be stranded and stressing about my future but here I am. 

I rest assured that my future is secured. As long as I put the effort and hard work,  I can do it. You have brought hope and light in children from poor backgrounds.