My vision for our group, Students for Humanity, is that we become active members in our communities. That we bring about positive change in people’s lives. And I take it upon myself to go out there into our communities and find out what exactly are some of the things that we can help them out with. I know of many struggling, community-based organizations that I feel we can assist.  I am also willing to go out there and find people who are willing to donate to or sponsor those organizations, so that they can continue with the good work that they are doing. -- MCYB We, as students for humanity, want to do something important for our communities. So I want to contribute on the orphanage side, because I like working with people and children. To me, helping young people and working with young minds is what I enjoy most. I will also help finding sponsors. -- mfundo I would like to be responsible for the compilation of short stories. I think that it is important for us to express our creativity and not let our talents fade, I mean, it is very rare for one to see young people actually having a short ...

Image under the creative commons by D-G-Butcher From my knowledge and experience of culture up until this point, I can define culture as the shared expression of behaviors and interactions, and affective understanding that is learned through a process of socialization. These shared expressions identify the members of a culture group while also distinguishing those of another group. Culture is the way one expresses his or her self according to the way of one's family belief-like style of living and it holds the history of one's people. I am a Xhosa child and I was raised under and taught the Xhosa rituals and customs. Some of the practices that I do, I actually perform them because it is a must and I do not even know the meaning of them, nor the idea behind it all. Some of us, as the youth we do not value our culture because of the things affecting us in this generation. – Mfundo My life has been a reflection of what many young people are thinking about culture. For some reason I don’t seem to get across the fact we do things that are different but we are the same. This is the reason I say I ...

I have a dream about my career not dreams like most people do then they got into a cage that they are stuck of choosing at the end on which dream that they must go for. My dream is to be a guy that is dreaming the world of the new technology. I want to work with computers for the rest of my life. Everyday I am on my cell phone because I haven’t own a computer yet, just surfing the net and figuring how it works and how it is operating. Fast cars, I like them so much and even dreaming of driving one. I like racing as I like competing at school, actually doing that with myself. I want to drive. I would love to own a house that is designed by me, because I love things that I own and one day say “That thing was designed by me”. And not thinking of marrying, the reason would be because I love my job than anything else. I also want to be a body builder and even be part of the World Wrestling. By the one and only, Siphe Mananga (Mr. Nice Guy). My dream is to ...

Hi, my name’s Daria. I’m 23 years old Ukrainian girl. I love smiling, reading books, learning new things, traveling all around the world and universe. In fact, I’m an ordinary girl and I have a gigantic dream-to become a translator and help people understand each other and live in peace and harmony. And I strongly hope to achieve my goals. But there is one thing that I will never be able to do- I’ll never be able use my legs and hands the way people of my age do… I am the first and very beloved child of my amazing parents. They are my great supporters. My parents were looking forward to having a baby but the day of my birth turned into a nightmare for them. The first words my mom heard from the doctors were “Your daughter has no eyes and you should better leave her at the nursing home for disabled people, as  she’s like a vegetable and you shouldn’t sacrifice  your life because of such a child”…You can only imagine my mom’s horror after such terrible statements. Although she was lost for words but in her heart she knew that she would never leave her daughter…Some hours later it turned out that I did have normal eyes but there was something wrong with my legs ...

Greetings all! What a blessing to sit again with sober young minds, unpacking the messages of Black Consciousness activist Steve Bantu Biko. Biko once said, 'The blacks are tired of standing at the touchlines to witness a game that they should be playing.' We spoke about Biko's message of self-love and they spoke extensively about what constitutes to their self-love - and in most cases 'what makes them hate themselves'. They found some encouragement to lead in overcoming the struggle young people with self-love, self-esteem and self-confidence - necessary tools for them to be who they were truly meant to be (beautiful, passionate, conscious citizens of a highly progressive country). Enjoy!

The question we answer in this weeks podcast is: 'Do you think that South Africa will benefit from hosting the 2010? and how?' On the show you'll hear the different perspectives from young (black) South Africans. What is your point of view? listen to ours here: Journalist Klaas Deknatel started an online initiative Zuidafrika2010.net (in Dutch) which prepares the 2010 fans for all soccer related and non-soccer related facts and actualities about South Africa. Klaas was interested to publish something on his website about the 2010 Vocab. He was part of the debate that was held post the recording of the podcast and during the creation of the podcast itself. His report about the 2010 Vocab can be found here (in Dutch).

By Ntombie Ntuntum The website has been an inspiration to me, to read about other learners story and to learn things about how they feel about their community, how they see things in this world. But I'd love to know what other teens (except us students for humanity members) are seeing the world that we live in. It's quite interesting to see passion of writing about their life. I like the fact that we also educating people how to communicate in Xhosa, I think it would be fun if we could all know how to speak our 11 official languages, imagine I speaking Venda don't you think? By Siphe Mananga I just want to communicate with the students around the world and let my voice be heard. Let people know what as the students of South Africa are doing to encourage other youth and share our views on politics, sport and education. The thing I want is to learn the most important things, because not everybody knows it all no matter how wise you are. I want to be able to teach, be a leader and make I can serve the community on what I have in hand. I want the site to ...

Mfundo Nomnabo is building a brighter FUTURE for the young ones... South Africa is a struggling in terms of education compared to other countries so that is the reason I decided to help those children who are struggling with their schoolwork and who do not have the same opportunities as this one I have. I am helping these students with their schoolwork and by sharing the knowledge which I have with them. I believe that I know a lot more things than some of them but that doesn't mean that I'm better than either one of them and we treat one another as one family. The main reason why I started this small Organisation called Each One Must Teach One is because I want to reduce the concentration of violence, crime, drug abuse, and more in my community and South Africa as a whole.  I'm still struggling to get more children in my neighborhood to this organisation but I feed these ones that I have with knowledge. The idea behind this project is to help each and every child in my community and I believe that together, my community and me, we can build a better homeland for all of us and ...

My name is Wonga Zono. I'm a student at COSAT . I am a civilian that lives in the shacks of Site B in Khayelitsha with an ambition of fulfilling his dream. That dream is not to run away to live in the suburbs (what a lot of people do when they make it out of the township) while the people I grew up with are still living their lives in a poor environment. People often tell us stories about how people are struggling through poverty because they are looking at shacks from the wrong side and these became bedtime stories. YES! Shacks also have the right side, which is why I decided to write about my life. It starts when I started living in the shacks of Khayelitsha where someone gets shot dead in front of your eyes and when cops ask who killed him, you would say "I don't know" because the thought of you also being killed would run through your veins as if the heart is pumping them, when we were about 8-10 years old we were already smoking what was called "Glue" which we bought for about R10. We would sit in a water Tap that was ...