Doing the Right Things in the Right Areas
(Original)

Charmaine Ihuhua
(Age 24, Namibia)
Varsity College, Cape Town

This is a project that I’m vey passionate about and I am grateful for this opportunity to voice my views and opinions.

My project is aimed at high school students because in Namibia the children aspire only to finish high school, with little thought for tertiary education. This mentality is held mostly by pupils living in informal settlements and townships, the areas where most of the unemployed masses live. Pupils are uninspired, coming from dysfunctional homes that yield few or no role models for themselves. Most of these pupils are poverty stricken and attend schools which cannot provide even basic resources necessary for their education. No guidance teachers or social workers are available for them to make important career decisions, making it almost difficult to make the right decisions. I believe that if we, as an idea, invest our time into the development of our pupils we will be building a successful nation.

With unemployment rates of over 40% of the workforce working in the public sector, university graduates are finding it increasingly difficult to find gainful employment. Entrepreneurship seems like the only possible way to create work in our economically challenged country. More money must be allocated, by the government, to help young people with bright ideas, talent and passion to do the things in which they believe and which will generate enough of an income to live off of.

Last year my brother and I went into Goreangab Junior high school, a local high school, to assess the pupils, based on my brother’s varsity assignment on public health. We handed out questionnaires {purely anonymous} to try and establish how the pupils lived, their domestic situations, their sexual history and orientation. Results showed that most of the pupils have either been molested or raped by a family member. These kids are more worried about poverty and its consequences than fulfilling their dreams. High school drop-out percentage is increasing.

A group, which will consist of my brother, a few friends and me, will be speaking to the pupils of Goreangab Junior High School every day for a week in July. The focus will be sexual purity; challenging them to imagine and to aspire for more. Having just finished my degree in Business Management, I will be able to dedicate more of my time to the project. I will continue speaking to the pupils because I come from the same neighborhood and I understand their plight.

When a child comes from an environment of violence, abuse, depression and poverty, they form low self-esteems and they never dare to dream. There are those few exceptions that have risen above their circumstances but the majority which is most of our population is stuck in trepidation and is inert.

With the permission of the Principal and parents, we hope to meet twenty girls and boys continually every Saturday to spend time inspiring and imparting knowledge. This will be developed and would be a build up from the week that we spend with them in July.

I want to try and show the girls I will be working with that I was just like them, until someone believed in me and my potential and in turn taughted me how to believe in myself.  In the Bible there is a scripture which reads: “My people die of a lack of knowledge”-Hosea 4:6, the relevance of this scripture is so striking because the pupils lack the wisdom and knowledge which they need to make the right decisions. I plan to monitor their progress and hopefully help them graduate from high school. I plan to teach them to build their community by getting them involved in compulsory community service; they will be expected to complete a certain number of hours of community service every month. This will teach them social responsibility; how to care and respect others around them and their environment. I will teach them how to be entrepreneurs with what they own and how to manage their money. Another thing we can to do to sustain development is to expose pupils to our diverse cultural heritage. This can be done by visiting museums and showing the pupils documentaries that will broaden their understanding of where they came from.

On a broader spectrum, I think once we have established ourselves in this particular high school and received more committed volunteers to work with us every Saturday we would expand to other high schools in the area and possibly get social workers involved in our work.

In conclusion, this project is aimed at empowering pupils to be more and to do more for themselves and their community, therefore impacting the nation.