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I’m part of a pretty awkward generation. With long hair, skinny jeans and ear piercings, you’ll be forgiven for mistaking the sex of a member of Generation Y. There’s no real “cool” anymore. The hipster (it kind of means cool, but it's different) trend has morphed from its established identity as anything that isn’t mainstream to pretty much anything goes. For example, a pair of Nikes won’t be cool if you got them at the Nike Factory Store but the same pair is the epitome of hipster if they were bought at the local thrift shop.

 

The generation seems to adore anything that is either extreme in its contrast or that is entirely comfortable in its plainness. Your hairstyle will be cool if you spent the better part of your Friday afternoon getting your product to produce and perfecting that Dapper Dan look or, perplexingly, if you put no effort into it at all.

 

Gen Y is in limbo between retro and recent. You’re cool if you drive a 1984 Volkswagen Beetle but also if you’re the owner of the latest GTI. By all means get an iPhone as long as you get a cover that makes it look like a cassette. The quintessence of technology is a MacBook, but please hide it in a case that makes it look like a 1970’s encyclopaedia. Live in a modern penthouse apartment but remember to have your walls adorned with images of Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn and James Dean.

 

It’s because of this identity crisis that the current generation is often written off as a bunch of tweeting twerps that haven’t read any pages outside of Facebook. A recent article in Time magazine went as far as describing the latest generation as narcissistic and lazy.

 

While I sometimes find it challenging not to share these sentiments, I do believe that, for all its oddities, it is this generation that will transform South Africa both economically and socially. You don’t have to look far to find stories of innovation and dedication that cannot but inspire – and this doesn’t even refer to the inspiring stories of SAWIP team members. All over South Africa young leaders are taking ownership of the social inequalities that they’ve inherited and are taking steps to address them.

 

A group of UCT students recently decided that they weren’t reaching enough students through their tutoring business. The solution? A programme that can be accessed online that presents learners with questions related to their respective subjects that are designed not only to test their knowledge, but also to give their schoolteachers insight into the areas of the subject that the learner doesn’t understand. The programme has been developed and financed by students and their business has sold around 50 licenses to schools in the Western Cape.

 

Some Stellenbosch students decided a few years ago to form an organisation known as The Dead Parrots. The organisation simply seeks to promote critical dialogue amongst students at Stellenbosch University. Their events on campus have compelled students to re-evaluate their position on various issues including race and gender equality. Most recently they hosted a book launch of radio personality Eusebius McKaiser.

 

The New Hope Summit, an initiative pushed by Stellenbosch students a few years ago, is currently running in Muizenberg. The Summit is a meeting of student leaders from Universities, Universities of Technology and FET Colleges in the Western Cape where topics such as transformation and expanding the reach of education are discussed and strategies formulated. This year the summit is focusing on a bill of student rights that will hopefully improve tertiary education in the Western Cape.

 

These initiatives have all been launched to serve a perceived need in society and all have been run in the spirit of making our country better for all who live in it. Most importantly all of these initiatives have sprung out of the minds of some exceptional members of Generation Y.

 

Somewhere between creating monotonous electronic music and deciding it’s OK for guys to wear pants two sizes too small, Generation Y has decided to take on some of the problems facing our country. The youth of South Africa have announced that they have accepted their role in rebuilding South Africa and shown that they are not just going along for the ride but leading the way. I have hope for my generation.

 

As part of our SAWIP curriculum we are required to do 30 hours of community service before we leave for Washington DC. I chose to do mine through a non-profit organization called "Each one Teach one".

Each week we go to Lavender Hills and teach young and energetic children maths and English at a very fundamental level. We collaborate with another organization called "Mother Aid" who provide after care services to all the surrounding schools in Lavender Hills.

This has been a positively enriching experience for me and it reminds me on a daily basis how blessed I truly am. One student who has caused me to profoundly change the way in which I see the education system in South Africa, is a 15 year old girl by the name of Ashleigh Ndlovu*.

Ashleigh is a Grade 9 girl who I have been working with for the past few weeks, trying to improve her maths skills and equip her to tackle any problems that she may come across.

As I VERBALLY went through factorisation, simplification, converting fractions into percentages and a number of other fairly well known concepts in her syllabus; it dawned on me that she was a bit of a maths whizz kid. I assumed that the only reason she came for tutoring was to solidify her fundamentals and perhaps get that elusive “A”.

Upon further investigation however, I came to learn that she is currently failing maths at school and has been scraping through for a number of years. This perplexed me and saddened me deeply. It was only when we started working through exercises from the text book that the underlying problem presented itself.

Ashleigh’s knowledge and understanding of individual topics was far above the average, but when it came to figuring out what was actually being asked in a test situation, she didn’t have a clue where to start. Ashleigh’s home language was Xhosa, her 2^nd language being Afrikaans and finally her 3^rd language being English. Ashleigh attends an English school where she is taught and examined in English only.

In effect, she is being severely penalised by a factor that is out of her control and not her fault in any way. She has tremendous potential and knows all the concepts she needs to know, but based on the current examination process, she will (potentially) simply end up in the “Failure” pile and as another statistic.

Ashleigh’s story saddened me deeply and it made me wonder if she is preparing herself for a battle that she simply has no chance of winning. It made me wonder how many more Ashleighs there are in our country and what we can do to perhaps address this very sad situation. The time to act is now and I am determined to find a solution to this educational barrier to entry.

I encourage comments and potential thoughts on this pressing issue.

In the meantime, I will continue to do all I can to make sure Ashleigh has a future and can overcome the difficulties she has been faced with. Our future does depend on it after all.

*Name has been changed for privacy purposes.

 

 

(Spoiler alert: It creates apathy and prevents social cohesion)

 

“Hope has wings; butterfly wings”.

 

The words are inscribed on a plaque as you enter Butterfly House, instilling in you an immediate understanding of what drives this dynamic organisation. Hope.

 

The SAWIP team had the privilege to join the Drakenstein Palliative Hospice and Butterfly House in celebrating Hospice week. While marching through the streets surrounded by singing and poster-waving children, a young lady of 6 years old struck up a conversation with me about the cat running across the road.

 

She proudly informed me that she treated cats. Thoroughly amused, and slightly confused, I asked her if she was a vet, only to be informed that she was a doctor. Or that she was training to become one and would one day look after me if I was ill. I could feel my heart stir, and not just from sympathy for the neighbourhood cats.

 

This young girl had hope.

 

Charles Snyder, pioneer of positive psychology, defines hope as: “the sum of the mental willpower and waypower that you have for your goals”. Willpower is, of course the drive to achieve a goal; waypower is the strategies and mental roadmaps crafted for goal achievement.

 

This young girl certainly displayed willpower, a gift Butterfly House has certainly given her. A SAWIP team member remarked that he did not see a marginalised mindset in the children. They did not feel oppressed by their environment or see how it should necessarily restrict their future lives; a beautiful, freeing mindset. But as an employee of Butterfly House reflected, realistic goals keeps hope alive.

 

One of the values Butterfly House tries to instil in these children is self-confidence. The staff and volunteers treat these children with such loving care and provision that the children of Fairyland feel valued. The children I saw marching through the streets were proud of their Butterfly House and Hospice; they felt worthy and loved.

 

This sense of worth and self-confidence will have children dreaming, planning brighter futures as they value themselves. It will give them willpower, the core component of hope.

 

The other component is waypower. Butterfly House nurtures these children holistically. They provide health education as well as health care professionals. Play-therapy affords psychosocial support. They also assist the families of children in sustaining a hale and healthy life. For the older youth they teach life skills, of justice, ethos, ethics and accountability. They have skill development programs and they even teach the children ballroom dancing and singing and art; means of self expression and coping mechanisms.

 

These children are taught how to handle life’s knocks as best they can. That is waypower.

 

Hope, to me, is energy. It is the final spurt of power that you get in the face of adversity by knowing you have the willpower and the waypower to overcome. It is the vigour with which you tackle not only troubled times, but your everyday life when you have the anticipation of victory or accomplishment. Hope breathes activity into your life; dreams into your mind’s heart.

 

That is why the personification of the butterfly image is so beautifully appropriate: the butterfly needs to struggle to achieve metamorphosis. Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho retold a story at a recent book launch, entitled “The Lesson of the Butterfly”.

 

The narrative speaks of a man who watches a butterfly struggle to break free from its cocoon. After hours have passed the cocoon was scarred only by a small hole, the exhausted butterfly still trapped inside. As the creature becomes absolutely still, the man tries to open the cocoon with a pair of scissors. He finds the butterfly crumpled and wrapped in wrinkled wings. The man waits for the butterfly to spread its wings, hoping it would come alive and fly away. It did not. It’s shrunken body merely shuddered, incapable of flight.

 

What the man did not understand was that the butterfly has to struggle to emerge viably from the cocoon. The struggle was nature’s way to strengthen its wings. It prepares them for the troublesome life that would follow its brief fight.

 

Hope sustains that fighting energy in us. As life is strengthening the wings of the children of Fairyland, Butterfly House is working to keep them energetic and struggling to achieve metamorphosis. Butterfly House is equipping them with willpower and waypower to emerge from the cocoon.

 

And spread their wings.