More details on the mission trip

So I will admit, I am not completely sure on the details about South Africa.  However, after reading some blogs of the people who went last year, I have a better idea now.


You can check out this short video made a couple years back when the team consisted of mostly Harvard students.  

We will be working in the black township of Mamelodi, just outside one of the nation's largest cities--Pretoria. Even though Apartheid ended in the 1990s, this country still struggles with a lot of racial tension. Many young, white college students in Pretoria have literally never stepped foot inside a black township. Because of the educational and economic disparities, many black students are struggling with poverty. Education can lift the youth of the black townships out of poverty, but their schools lack resources. In South Africa, the total admission to the University of Pretoria  from all seventeen schools in the Mamelodi township is about 200 students. The total admission from one regional white school is also around 200.


The goal is to get more African American students out of poverty and into college. Previous trips helped us to see how magnetic American students are to South African students. While many white South Africans are unwilling (on their own) to cross the cultural and racial boundaries erected by years of racial segregation under Apartheid, they are curious, willing, and even eager to join us—the loud talkative Americans—as we go into the townships to tutor black high school students. Taking advantage of this fact, we hope to be a catalyst to help overcome racial tensions by having white Africans join us for the weeks we are there and to continue the program after we leave. 

Our team is made up of college students, and we will focus our efforts this summer to work together with the University of Pretoria to progress a sustainable tutoring program that was established about five years back, for students in Mamelodi that the white students can continue when we leave. The ultimate goal is to get more black students out of poverty and into college.

Hope that gives you a little more of an idea of what we will be doing this next month!

Stay tuned.

"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" Matthew 28:19

Love,
Eann