Dignity Day – South Africa
On Monday, October 20th 2009, we celebrated Global Dignity Day in South Africa with 1,120 (one thousand one hundred and twenty) grade 12 students at Diepsloot Combined School. In addition to students from Diepsloot we also had grade 12 students from Itirele Zenzele Comprehensive School and from St Angars Secondary School. These are students who had previously been “written off” as delinquent youth. To this extent I was astounded by the depth of talent and positive energy amongst them.
We were very warmly received by the school principal, Mrs Kgabo who is the principal to two of the schools. We also had two education inspectors from the Department of Education.
With 41% of our population comprising the youth, South Africa has one of the youngest populations in the world. To this extent there is a significant need to ensure that these young people are transformed into productive citizens. It is against this backdrop that I gave them a talk about dignity and their relevance in South Africa and the rest of the world.
The students responded very enthusiastically and I selected a few of them who came up on stage to talk about their visions of themselves in the future. Their aspirations ranged from becoming radio journalists (and two of them gave very entertaining impromptu radio “performances”) to becoming engineers and chartered accountants as well as writers (one of the students shared a very moving piece of writing she had prepared on the aids plague amongst South Africa’s youth).
This was truly a wonderful day and I would like to thank John, Haakon and Pekka for encouraging us to continue to spread the message of Dignity around the world.
May 25th, 2010 at 11:31 pm
Good luck and thanks for posting!