You can be part of this story! Please join me in supporting the life dreams of some inspiring South Africans from Soweto, the townships outside Johannesburg. I have known them for 20 years, when as unemployed young adults they participated in a 1998 skills-development program (photo below). By the time they completed that project, they had moved from feeling “stuck in-between” to feeling as if they were “in transition” in a rapidly transitioning South Africa. Yet while the apartheid era officially ended with the celebrated 1994 democratic elections, South Africa remains a vastly inequitable country, with racialized poverty, high crime, and an unemployment rate that hovers around 30%.
Although they have made incremental, positive changes in their lives, they struggle to make ends meet, they worry about providing for their families, and they are disappointed that their lives are not as secure as they had hoped and imagined in 1998. But they all have plans to pursue their dreams, and while I was in Johannesburg recently, some of them identified a significant "next step" that requires modest funding. Your donation in any amount will support their individual plans. Please visit my GoFundMe page, where you can read about their plans and view short videos they created to introduce themselves to you. When you make your donation, you may specify which project(s) you would like to support, and you will receive updates as they put their plans into action. We'd love to have you be part of this story!