Youth-led not for profit organisations such as the Destiny Achieve Foundation are practical contributory steps to the building of a civil service state.
We are up committed and armed as a generation, committed selflessly in the quest of building the future South African state to be inherited by the student-youth community. In the diversity of our culture, race, and identity, we have created little-big innovative spaces of conversations, platforms that guide learners and university students preparing them for the future, the life of university and young responsible adulthood.
Interestingly, and as it should, these innovative spaces and platforms are being led and formed by the members of the student-youth community. The future prepared and brave enough to involve themselves selflessly in the pragmatic building of a South African state with a consensus-equity philosophical and political identity.
One may still ask, where can we begin as a student-youth community to build such a state? Youth led innovative not for profit organisations such as the Destiny Achieve Foundation (DAF) are contributory steps to the building of a civil service state. DAF is one of the few youth-led organisations that has a dedicated mission of transforming the educational and career journeys of high school learners and university students, focusing particularly on learners and students from underserved and under resourced communities.
In their overall contributory practical step into the pragmatic state building of South Africa, DAF peruses the mission of improving the youth through accessible educational support, mentorship, and integrity leadership development, and opportunities for personal and career growth.
In its organisational form, it is a mark by the student-youth community of the capabilities and the network-worth they possess. Far beyond from the organisational form, it’s a platform which has been practically built by the student-youth community, for and within the student-youth community. This duality contends very well with the prevailing educational crisis.
They are particular facts about the educational system which we must wrap our heads around and these include the persistence poor compensation of our pedagogic practitioners and its administration, the literacy crisis we have of our Grade 4’s (aged 9 to 10) who cannot read for meaning, a monopolistic exclusive dominating curriculum, and also the fact that more than seventy percent (70%) of public schools don’t have an on-site fully functioning library.
Indeed, the incumbent government of thirty (30) democratic years has greatly expanded our education base and access to education simultaneously attempting to not compromise the quality of education. However, the basic facts of an educational crisis remain prevalent. Our incumbency has lacked the capacity and political will to realistically solve this persistent educational crisis.
Where the incumbency lacks, inspiring youth-led not for profit organisations like DAF take charge as they recognise not only the educational crisis but, also the deadly consequences of the crisis if left unattended.
The argument in its main for this piece is that an innovative driven and community-rooted not for profit organisation founded by Mathabatha Malete and led by first generation university students, has epitomised the practical contributory steps to building the lost South African state particularly by focusing on a critical sector of society where the heroes and shapers are natured, a sector who’s responsibility is to carve-produce the civil service. DAF resembles the much-needed antidote for dealing with our educational crises. The antidote is indeed this time manufactured and tested within the student-youth community.
–MediaHouse150
