Free State Charity Organisation Gives Back

This amazingly altruistic project was started on 26th May 2020 by a group of wonderful students from several Free State universities and colleges. Having friends to encourage and help one makes every task a bit easier, and this group is starting to do great things.

“If you cannot feed a hundred people, just feed one person.” – Maya Angelou

They live in various areas in the Free State and became aware of the challenges faced by their communities. They keenly understood how these people felt. Inspired by the need to do good for society, they decided to team up to provide what help they could.

There are currently six of them: Tlholohelo an M-CUT student doing BEd, Teboho a P-UNISA student doing BEd, Thabang a C-CUT student doing BEd, Boipelo an M-CUT student doing IT, Dinah an M-CUT student doing an advanced diploma in marketing, and Tsietsi an R-TOSA student doing engineering.

These young people all have many responsibilities and expenses themselves. But they are not just talking about the poverty around them. They have decided to actually put the wonderful concept of Ubuntu to work.

They are using their own money to provide food packages, sanitary towels, and toiletries to young girls from disadvantaged families. But they know that handouts are not the best way to go. So, they are attempting to equip them with skills as well that will sustain them and their families in the future.

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

Their spokesperson, Tlholohelo, had this to say: “We believe in education, so, we held a lunch for this year’s matriculants. The aim was to help them with university applications as well as trying to motivate them by sharing our experiences with them.”

They are currently able to help ten families with food packages, and twenty-one individuals with toiletries and sanitary pads every month. However, many more desperate requests for help come in every day from others, but they are financially unable to assist all of them. They are, therefore, changing tack: “We also plant vegetables for people that we help so that they can sell or feed themselves through their gardens. Our plan now is to use the money that we spend monthly, to buy stock for them to sell (entrepreneurial skills) instead of providing food for them. This is what we do in terms of skill development.”

The project has been running for about four months now and is sustained by the contributions of these six students from their own pockets.

It is so encouraging when one sees this sort of dedication from intelligent young South Africans. It gives one hope for our wonderful country where so many things seem to have gone wrong.

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