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Education in South Africa ~ by Justin Zoradi

When I was in high school I never really thought about whether or not I would go to college. It was assumed that I would go and frankly, I probably wasn’t given much of a choice. So I went and had a blast. Sure, I learned a lot, but I never really thought of it as much more than a road to graduate school, a potential job, and a great opportunity to meet friends and my future wife.

While college was something I considered an assumed rite of passage; that is not the case for my friends in the townships of South Africa. Because of apartheid, only until 1994 were the vast majority of South Africans even allowed access to higher education. So when I asked what a college education means for young people in their communities, I hear a very different answer. A college education in South Africa means empowerment, opportunity, and academic equality for black township youth.

With only 3.5% of black South Africans graduating from college, higher education is a key way to transform South Africa and confront the devastating effects of generational poverty.

Unlike many forms of international relief, Education is lasting aid. An education doesn’t go away and it can’t be used up. Rather, education expands and the benefits grow exponentially. It is aid put to use forever by people within the community.

About These Numbers Have Faces:
After learning about the power of education in South Africa, three years ago, I started a nonprofit organization called These Numbers Have Faces. We invest in the future leaders of South Africa by empowering young people to reduce poverty in their own communities. Through college scholarships and a dynamic Community Impact Model based on service, mentoring, and financial literacy, young people are developing the skills to transform South Africa.

Our current These Numbers Have Faces students are the first in their families to attend college and represent a new generation of black South Africans reversing the inequalities of the apartheid era. 

This all started when I spent a few months in South Africa and stumbled upon an amazing youth soccer team in the townships outside of Cape Town. The team is led by a guy named Coach Eric and they use soccer to promote HIV/AIDS awareness, leadership skills, character development, and education.

I spent the whole summer with this team, hanging out, building relationships, and I felt God begin to start something really powerful in me.

On the last night I was there, Coach Eric and I had dinner. He said to me, “Justin will you help the boys on my team go to college. They’re ambitious, they’re intelligent, but they lack the resources to further their education. Did you know only 3.5% of black South Africans graduate from college?”

At this moment, I kinda freaked out. I said, “I’m not your guy. I would have to start a charity and fundraise. I got a C- in microeconomics in college. I don’t think I can do it.”

He said to promise me we’d stay in touch and I agreed we would.

I moved to Portland, started graduate school and stayed in touch with Eric. We emailed and text messaged, and I started talking to other players on the team as well.

All the while, I felt a weight and knew it was God just chasing me. I tried so hard to ignore it, but something happened one day while I was in graduate school at Portland State University. I was sitting in the park blocks going through some reading material, and I started thinking about my friends in South Africa. Then I heard God loud and clear.

He said, “Justin, will you deny for others what you demand for yourself?”

Crap.

I knew I had to do it. I had to start something that would help these kids go to college and become leaders because I’d had the exact same opportunities. I knew it would be wrong to deny something for someone else and then demand it for myself.

That day I walked to Powell’s Books and I bought, How to Start and Build a Nonprofit Organization.

Book in hand, I gathered my friends and told them I wanted to start something.

We called it These Numbers Have Faces because I knew that my friends in South Africa weren’t statistics. They weren’t the color-coded charts, pie graphs, excel spreadsheets that we see in our text books and plastered all over the internet. These Numbers Have Faces.

That was three years ago and we had absolutely no idea what we are doing. Now we have 8 students in college. We continue to support the soccer team, have four high school partnerships, and recently launched a Women’s Empowerment Campaign to help confront the lack of opportunity faced by women in South African townships.

I am happy to say that all of our students who are receiving college scholarships are also being mentored by community leaders, attending tutoring sessions and financial literacy classes, and are completing community service projects.

At These Numbers Have Faces, we have a vision. Our vision is that young people around the world will have access to a quality education and learn the skills needed to reduce poverty in their own communities.

We have humbly joined God in this work that is changing lives.

Everyday God speaks to me in new ways, challenges me, empowers me, draws me closer to him and his work in redeeming and rebuilding the Kingdom.

www.TheseNumbers.org

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Wendell Berry Poem

I have been deeply moved by many of Wendell Berry's essays and novels.  His poetry is equally insightful.  Here is one of his most famous poems.   I thought it a fitting reflection two days after the 4th of July:

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

Listen to carrion -- put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go.

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Grace and Peace.

-Mike

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