Community Service Speech- Graduation Ceremony 2011

Good evening ladies and gentleman

As most of you might know or might have seen; The South Africa Washington Internship Program is bound by a three tier prospect…

1) Leadership Development

2) Community Service

3) The Internship

It gives me great pleasure to divulge the sensational nature of our 2011 community service project.

FIRED UP and READY TO GO… this is how we felt after all that we had learnt and absorbed in DC. We came back with a genuine hunger and thirst to impact the people of our nation, because we knew that we simply could. Through taxing preparations came the rise of our Lead Young – High Impact Youth leadership program. The vision behind our project was focused on harnessing and gleaning young potential leaders of a diverse socio-economy towards understanding their roles as young leaders in South Africa.

Out team hosted twenty-four optimistic young leaders from Kayamdi High school, Desmond Tutu High School and Blouberg High School. The programe took place over two days in which each of us facilitated a session, held group discussions and feedback sessions. Day one drew attention to (re) defining leadership were the learners were exposed to different styles and types of leadership, we played the infamous rope game which is set to instill an understanding of team dynamics. The day ended off with a fruitful session on community service, were the students identified problems arising in their schools and possible solutions.

Day two kicked off with an emotional narrative session facilitated by three of our team mates telling stories about their lives. The session was primed at illustrating the value of storytelling.Through this session the intensity and reality of the day- day South African challenges were unraveled, however it was evident that through sharing these stories a sense of comfortably and understanding was built as the students were moved and inspired by some of the stories shared. An enlightening session on vision and goal setting followed,we had a session on grasping the notion of social entrepreneurship and lastly leadership in South Africa

In between each session we had energy boosters and music just to get the blood pumping the students were highly entertained and showed full participation. I must congratulate Matthew and Erik on their “so you think you can dance” success, you guys were awesome! In essence the weekend was fun; focused and fulfilling we certainly built treasured relationships with the learners and surpassed our expectations for this entire weekend.

Over the weekend hunger and lack of respect were identified as one of the core problems within the school communities’. Ladies and gentleman we currently have a feeding scheme and a parent’s committee being initialized by the learners this goes to show that the weekend was truly stimulating.

At the end of the program while reminiscing on our success our project manager Kim Williams said some think that gave me goose bumps… She humbly said “guys, you have just planted twenty-four seeds” lead me to a quote uttered by mother Teresa saying that “if you can’t feed a hundred people, then just feed one”

SAWIP 2011, My leaders... we were privileged to have our hunger and thirst filled by this amazing program, we have fed twenty-four learners with something that I call “the colossal cake of hope” in it we have a handful of dreams, a bucket of opportunities, a myriad of ideas, a sprinkle of the realization that your voice can speak volumes and a pinch of support” we made this cake and we fed 24 learner who will go on to feed even more people. One bite of our cake got these learners FIRED UP AND READY TO GO!!!

Thank you!!!