Step by Step The Resilient Youth of the Amy Foundation

‘When you’re from a disadvantaged background you always think and believe that nice things are not for you, that they are just for rich people’, says Busisiwe Vokwana. In 2019 she started – free of charge – as a student in the Beauty and Wellness department of the Amy Foundation: ‘It changed my life in ways I can’t even explain. It’s such an emotional feeling. I’m over the moon!’ Busisiwe is one of eight South African youngsters portrayed in Step by Step, a booklet about the work of the Amy Foundation. This charity provides opportunities for youngsters from challenged and vulnerable communities. 

The booklet is written by Marchien Timmerman, leader of the Department of Theology and Worldview at Windesheim University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands. Timmerman has known the Amy Foundation since she first visited South Africa in 2015. In February 2020 she interviewed eight of the ‘resilient youth’ who have come up through the ranks of the foundation. She talked to these alumni about their hopes, their dreams and their life goals. ‘It was the sheer determination in their eyes that got to me’, she writes. These kids were given a chance and they took it: ‘When they talk about the things they want from life, it’s just as much about the things they don’t want. No more pitfalls, no more boredom, no more nothingness. There is no going back for them.’ 

The title Step by Step refers to the method the Amy Foundation implicitly applies to all its projects: you try, you learn, you adjust, you try again. It’s a philosophy those alumni have made their own, as they make clear in their interviews. When Sanele Noji teaches the young kids, he has one goal, he says: ‘Step by step bringing them further, making them move forward.’