I will admit that there are times Facebook surprises me. Every now and then, such great insights are splattered there that they simply have to be shared.
In this magazine, we strive to impart a very important message: that the corporate world is instrumental in creating a better world and a better future for all. In fact, each one of us is responsible for creating a better world for our children, and our children’s children and so on.
This little story I am about to share, left me humbled – enough to be more heartbroken than before about the state in which our youngsters find themselves today.
It is sourced from the MiniGarden SA Stylish Vertical Gardening page on Facebook. I would love to find the original source, but have been unable to. Even if this were a made-up story, the moral behind it still stands:
“There is a story about an anthropologist who proposed a game to the kids in an African tribe. He put a basket full of fruit near a tree and told the kids that whoever got there first would win the sweet fruits. When he told them to run, they all took each other’s hands and ran together, then sat together enjoying their treats. When he asked them why they had run like that, as one could have had all the fruits for himself, they said: ‘Ubuntu – how can one of us be happy if all the other ones are sad?’”
The hard facts are such: we are not looking after our youngsters, we are not paving the way for them, we are not giving them all the help they need – we are abandoning them to fend for themselves, ill-equipped in a world that doesn’t seem to care.
Obviously, not everyone and not all corporates are as cold as I have implied, but the fact remains that we need to stand together and assist this generation of people who – if not supported properly and immediately – are failing and will continue to fail.
It is not as though they are not trying at all to enter the job market. Some indeed have degrees or diplomas, but they are of no use to these people due to a lack of availability of jobs in the market.
Their level of despondency is a result of great and repeated disappointment.
This is where our children fall through the cracks – from being part of a society with the potential to be well-functioning, to adding to the social malaise we are trying to defeat: gangsterism, drugs, teenage pregnancy, deaths, disease, and physical, sexual and mental abuse, among others.
If we don’t hold their hands and act as one, they alone don’t fail – we all fail, and that cannot be allowed to happen.
Let’s not dishonour the 500 youngsters of yesteryear who lost their lives on 16 June 1976 during the Sharpeville Massacre, by ignoring the youngsters of today.
