Students for Humanity

Bridging the digital divide, one blog post at a time …

Students for Humanity started in Jan 2009 with a group of students from underprivileged areas ‘Townships’ around Cape Town. I got to know those students quite well the year before while teaching them Leadership-class (working on self-esteem, presentations, teamwork). The reasons to start working ‘online’ with my students was three-folded:

– bridging the digital divide

– empowering students to have a voice (a continuation of our leadership program)

– creating global awareness : connecting students worldwide

I tried to involve outsiders as much as possible (for example, Jan Folmer – from the famous podcast justvocabulary.com came to do a Podcast workshop with the students). Andre Vermeulen (A South African living in the UK took care of the technical bits to create the site) The passionate South African writer, Nonkululeko Godana came to join the team during the second half of 2009. We are now trying to get youth in different places of the world to join the conversation,  some partners in that process are Zamo Nkatshu in Johannesburg, Chris in Malawi and Pelle Aardema in The Netherlands.

Read an interview that Media24 took with me here

VISIT THE PROJECTS WEBSITE HERE: www.studentsforhumanity.com