Equip African Teens to Succeed

When Precious’ mother fell sick while she was in 11^th grade, she knew she would have to carry even more of the family’s concerns, including caring for her younger sister. “I couldn’t talk to my mother about a lot of things and didn’t want to subject her to stress,” she explained. She also felt her own stress affect her studies and, she feared, her future.

Her relationships with her Video Mentors, Sarah and Angela, helped her dig deeper to find the strength to keep her studies on track. “Both my mentors helped me to realize that the situation I was going through at the time was not the end of my world. They encouraged me to work hard and do more to create opportunities to further my education.” And Precious did – she held things together all the way through college to earn a degree in Sports Management. Today, she has a full-time job as a Sports Facilitator at Afrika Tikkun, a highly respected non-profit.

Precious helps run afternoon and weekend programs in the Apartheid-era Orange Farm township just outside of Johannesburg. And she coaches the young participants, and her younger sister, and share with them the lessons she learned. “I learned that hard work, perseverance and patience are very important ingredients of life. I could have easily given up on life because of my family situation but through mentoring, I could face life with renewed hope that things would work out for me if I stayed focused and put all my efforts to doing well.” We know she will!

Thank you to our global donors and mentors for your support! As Precious has shown, success is not achieved overnight and requires the long, life-changing relationship video mentoring brings. Your support motivates our South African students to persist in their mission to build better futures for themselves.