WANcareerlife: Lerato is not only beautiful, but she is a fighter for her Etwatwa community

Lerato Sibisi

Her own erratic upbringing, devoid of meaningful role models and a compass for the future, but laden with self-hate and uncertainty, has prompted Lerato Sibisi to act decisively and play a part in ensuring that the lives of today’s youth are given direction and meaning. She does not want them to suffer from the same fate as she did when growing up. So, today she runs an NPO that seeks to fortify the resolve of kids in her township of Etwatwa in Benoni, east of Johannesburg. In this candid interview with Thembi Masser she extolls the objectives of her organisation and how keen they are to overhaul the dire situation of so many depressed and miserable kids who grow up unsure of what life has for them.

Lerato, 31, is the chairperson and the chief co-ordinator at AimHope, an NPO she started many years ago but which was only registered early this year. She says the registration did not happen earlier only because she did not find time to do so. There are a thousand and one things for her to do in her life and it was somewhat difficult to pause for a few minutes and register the organisation.

She does not only display an array of an excellent brains, but her looks have landed on stage and in the pages of glamour media and Lerato, or Lee as she is affectionately known in her circles, is a fashionable model at Rachel Modelling Agency.

Lerato, fourth from left, at the Miss Face of Daveyton pageant

But, as a community member in a township riddled with gang warfare and rampant teenage pregnancy and unemployment, Lerato decided to roll down the sleeves of her blouse and forfeit her make-up in order to knuckle down and shape the destiny of learners and kids who roam the streets blindly.

Lerato says in her schooling days…

*Her uniqueness was questioned by society, and this made her uneasy

*She was raised by a single parent

*No matter how smart she was there were hindrances

*There were no scholarships, no bursaries

*She studied humanities at school because she loved the arts but that proved to be a futile consideration as that did not open opportunity doors for her

*An emphasis was put on proficiency in maths, thus rendering other studies useless

So she formed AimHope to lead the fight against youth apathy and to inspire her community. “We aim to right so many wrongs and maladies we see bedevilling kids in our townships these days. We want to turn the lives of so many of them into a celebration, an achievement and a success.”

She is the organisation’s chairperson. And she is also its chief co-ordinator. As a co-ordinator she organises resources for their events so that these events become successful and so achieve their objectives. She also plans events or work on a brief from the events’ managers and planners. “Event managers ensure that the events go well and that co-ordinators follow the script and to achieve a great result.”

But when she in not in the board room Lerato becomes busy with learners and community members, discussing the intricacies of life with them. “My passion is in tutoring these learners, offering them an opportunity to beef up their self-confidence and dignity.”

She is amazing

Many of the learners have no clue what the future holds for them, she states. Many of them, she adds, are blindly just going through the motions of living a false life, pretending to be learning at schools while the truth is that they are not sure what they are doing. She thinks they are not aware of an opportunity what that is, being given the chance to learn, to be educated and to build a future with like-minded people. “It is a tragedy, really,” she remarks, aware that a lot of learners go through school only to be unemployed for decades in their life times. “The prospect of life is doomed for many of today’s kids if the situation is not turned upside down for them.”

These kids, she points out, indulge in sadistic activities like Satanism and gangsterism and a whole lot of nonsense you see today, like fascination with drugs and loveless teenage relationships founded only in fornication. “Our kids are adept in the ills that have no promise for the future, they attracted to ills that offer only instant flesh gratification. And that is where the unseen danger lurks. This misplaced gratification gives them a false sense of self-actualisation when that is that just an illusion.”

This situation is fatal, morbid and troublesome, she points out. “We need to turn things around if we are to save the world from a disaster. At present, so many of these learners are not mentored, nurtured and given a coaching in life skills. Even some schools are guilty of not looking properly after their learners,” she says. One of the reasons she thinks contribute to the malady is that teachers are overloaded with work and have to deal with too many learners, resulting in the former failing to know their learners better. “Maybe overcrowding of learners in classes has something to do with it, making it impossible for teachers to have a proper one-one-one with learners in order to establish rapport between them. A proper relationship between them should happen if teachers are to light the flame of hope for leaners to inspire their desires, their aims and goals, dreams and fantasies.

“And there are plenty of educational problems to deal with. Many learners struggle with comprehension and have difficulty with learning and with education. Illiteracy is a dark worm that threatens to destroy our children’s ability to deal with education. Maybe teachers need to go beyond teaching; they need to go into the learners’ background and built strong relationships with them. Maybe teachers need to use the kids’ peers to help explain concepts and then maybe again try to use different teaching and tutoring methods. I don’t know,” she shrugs, “but something ought to be done differently if we want to have future leaders who are educated and proficient in meaningful skills of life.”

So AimHope runs these tutoring classes to help learners to think and see themselves as future leaders. And Lerato says she has seen a noticeable change in the behaviour of learners she has interacted with since the NPO’s inception. “In the last two years I have sat down with close to forty kids to give them a pep talk about their life styles and that has given me immense strength to soldier on with our objectives.

“I empower them,” she says emphasises earnestly. “I want them to be on their own and to think on their feet and hit the ground running. AimHope aims to enrich every one of them, from grass-roots and up to the end of their lives. Every young person must be informed and must have direction. And, let me add, a community that is active and aware and is involved in the upbringing of their children helps built a better nation.”

AimHope recently held their first beauty pageant for female learners, the Miss Face of Daveyton for young school girls who, Lerato hopes, will become ambassadors in both their schools and communities and be an inspirational hope for the hundreds of young people who meander through life aimlessly and desperate.

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