Boston Media House students in Johannesburg who started a successful food donation campaign for Mandela month as part of their academic project say they will continue committing themselves to charity work.
According to the students, the goal was to collect 5,000 cans of non-perishable food for the Thuthuzela Aid Community Centre based in Marlboro, but were more than delighted when they exceeded the number; which they ended up collecting 5,840 cans from various companies.
“The Can of Hope campaign had an initial goal of collecting 5,000 cans of non-perishable foods. After running on-campus activations for the past three months, which encouraged students, staff and lecturers to bring cans, 5840 cans were collected. It is hoped that these cans will go towards helping with the feeding of the children of Thuthuzela,” said student Londi Konisi.
According to the students, they do charity work as part of their final year projects which requires them to gain experience by working with communities.
Third year student Geraldine Makau (20) said this project encouraged her to be more involved in community work as a young person.
“I learned that the things that we often take for granted, some people are praying to have and that as the youth, if something doesn’t affect them it doesn’t matter.
“While working on the charity campaign it was nearly impossible to get fellow students to engage with the campaign which made it difficult to reach our initial goal of collecting and donating 5,000 cans of food to Thuthuzela Aid Community Centre,” she said.
Meanwhile this was a school project, these students say they have learned that it takes teamwork and effort to get things done and that as the youth they can reach a milestone if they worked together to root out poverty in communities.
“The youth isn’t as active as they should be. I realised that most of us only got involved because it was for school. Young adults and the youth are speaking up on issues but can be seen as ‘social media activists’.
“There is a huge opportunity for the youth to go out there and do the real work. It all starts with us, if our parents see us doing good work on the streets, it would definitely inspire them to activate change in society,” another student Lerato Motloung told the Daily Vox.
