Climbing the Mountain
Thando* lives in at the base of a mountain in remote Kwa Zulu Natal. Her home is headed by her eldest sister who is 24, still trying to finish Grade 12 and has a 6-year old child. Thando's elder brother also stays at home. He did not finish high school and cannot find work. Together her family tries to make a living in a very humble home.
Thando's primary school was at the top of the mountain. The road is so steep that in order to return home, our recruitment team had to climb the mountain on foot so that the car had enough power to get back to the main road. Thando missed a year of school with complications from HIV, but repeated Grade 3 and worked hard to improve her results. Every day she climbed the mountain. She overcame new challenges. Her persistence led her to be discovered by Raise the Children as a bursary candidate in Grade 7.
When Thando came through to our partner, Inanda Seminary School, she completed a battery of tests. One entry on her ‘complete the sentence test’ stood out. The sentence begins “I can succeed in life if ” followed by a blank. Thando had written “if I complete school.”
Thando was right: the single most important factor in determining a rural girl's success is completion of high school. According to a recent country report from UN Women, South African women ages 20-24 from rural communities face the greatest chance of not moving forward post school. The technical term for this is NEET, Not Employed in Education or in Training.
In South Africa 68% of young women,
aged 20 - 24 do not move forward.
At Raise the Children, all of our young women move forward. When Thando joined our programme in January her chances to finish high school doubled, her chance of being employed or in tertiary education increased 14x, and her chance of going to university and finishing a degree increased 193x.
This isn’t magic. You can imagine the academic and emotional challenges our Scholars face when they enter into a new environment where English it the home language, the educational standards and expectations are high, and technology is used for schoolwork daily. Most Scholars also start to process the loss of their parents as they enter adolescence and work through issues of their identity.
To help our Scholars thrive we have a teacher appointed at each school to give us feedback and support on the ground. We run online tutoring sessions. Each Scholar is paired with a virtual mentor, many of whom are RTC alumni who have walked this journey before. We also use a growing network of psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists, and counsellors for therapy. It’s only through this support that the magic happens.
This is all great, but it’s not enough.
Our vision for our Scholars, their communities, and South Africa is, in the paraphrased words of Archibishop Desmond Tutu, to “Do your little bit of good where you are.”
We plant these seeds in their first interview with Raise the Children and slowly they bear fruit. Thando has begun her year well at Inanda Seminary School. Thanks to all those days climbing the mountain she is excelling at cross country, and her academic results are slowly and steadily improving. At the end of her first term with us she reflected:
“When I grow up I would like to help children who grew up like me, smart, but didn’t have the support they need. If I didn’t get this bursary from Raise the Children I would not be able to meet my needs or my family’s needs in the future. I want to help other children by telling them about my past and about what helps me to work until I finish. I would love to help people by encouraging them to not give up even when they see that its tough for them to continue."
This is what we want from our Scholars: to see the world around them and lift others up.
We are on a growth journey. When I joined Raise the Children in 2021 we had 21 Scholars in two regions of South Africa. Today we have 70 from across the country. Next year we’d like to have 100.
Help us help more Scholars like Thando to climb the mountain of adversity. Help us open doors where others fail to knock.
–Paul | CEO
*Thando is a pseudonym to protect the true identity of our Scholar.
