Ladies and gentlemen,

The South Africa Washington International Program is rooted in three principals, namely leadership, service and professional exposure. In the spirit of these pillars, the team was tasked to develop and execute a community service project, specifically concerning youth development.

Inspiration is an accumulation of events and influences. For the SAWIP team of 2012, the motivation for our community service project was a process, pooling insight and awareness we had collected from our individual paths, as well as our SAWIP and team guided journey.

We drew our inspiration from many sources. The young man at Mamma Viviane’s Iliso Societal Care whose poetry spoke of the escape education had afforded him; witnessing the transformative energy of hope and care at Butterfly House, seeing the accessibility of authority in the United States, and experiencing how civil cooperation and communication is used to guide and prioritise government intervention.

The SAWIP team is a brave and inspired bunch, deciding to merge three projects into one. We decided to refurbish the library of Marian RC High School, as well as hosting skills development workshops and an educational forum on government accountability measures.

For our library project, the team set out to create an environment conducive to learning outside of the classroom at Marian High School, a secondary school located in the community of Bishops Lavis. The underdeveloped area is vulnerable to socio-economic problems such as crime, gangsterism, drugs and inequality. The team wished to provide positive stimuli to the students surrounded by these negative social elements, and believe that reading is not only a research tool, but also a means to cultivate creativity and critical thinking.

After many phone calls, road trips and cans of wood polish, the library was opened to the evident delight of the students. The library at Marian High had previously been disorganised and under resourced. It is now a beautiful and stimulating environment filled with fiction and non-fiction, which the team hopes will inspire both a reading culture as well one of academic exploration.

As young South Africans, the team is also hyperaware of the unemployment crisis facing our peers. 42% of our fellow young South Africans are unemployed, of which 66% have no previous work experience. To address the large skills shortage that cripples our youth, the team decided to host a series of skills development workshops, to equip the school students and the community with the basic skills needed to empower themselves, which they would not normally have access to.

We presented the attendees with informed facilitators and interactive workshops, through which they could learn how to compile a C.V., create a business plan, and obtain more information on applying to tertiary education institutions.

The attendees were given educational packets on the subject matter and encouraged to participate actively in the sessions. The engagement was robust, with students expressing opinions and making further inquiries to the facilitators. The admissions workshop was especially rewarding to the students. It was about more than just paperwork. The students who attended this session were inspired to plan, dream and work towards attending a tertiary institute of education. The level of enthusiasm once again shows the youth hunger for the transformative power of education, and the dynamic hope that accompanies it.

Our third project was the government accountability forum. The aim of this is project was to reemphasise the importance of civil society in the development of our country. The team identified the lack of accountability as a factor affecting the efficiency of governance in South Africa. This was a recurrent theme from our Washington D.C. experience, where we came to realise the power of a culture of accessible government. The team collaborated with the local ward councillor, Ms Asa Abrahams, to organise a non-political forum where community members could voice their concerns or comments on the community.

We wanted to emphasize that the community must communicate with the local government, as they can best identify and prioritise the concerns of their area. For this partnership to be successful, dual accountability is required. The citizens in the community must actively be involved in problem resolution and advocacy, and the government must communicate their plans to the community and allow and include citizens’ contribution.

Community members submitted their comments to team members who noted and compiled them into a document. This was then used as a basis for a community dialogue later on the same day. Ms. Abrahams had identified a lack of knowledge regarding the responsibilities of the different spheres of government as a difficulty affecting her interaction with her constituents. The forum was thus introduced with an educational session on the structure of government, after which the floor was opened to representatives of the ward councillor’s office, as she could unfortunately not attend due to a death in the family.

The result was a robust dialogue emerging around issues such as security, communal activities and service delivery. Community leaders spoke passionately about issues, and later commented that they enjoyed having a non-political platform. After the event, the conflicting parties met and had further discussion, an indication that the event was successful in stimulating dialogue for problem resolution and inspiring a culture of community meeting. The compiled document of the community’s concerns is on file with the ward councillor, where we have encouraged the community to follow up on the processes used to address these concerns.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I believe the community service project of the SAWIP Team of 2012 was an inspired project. Our six month journey has been one of exploration, exposure, explanation and an explosion of our world views. We discovered (or re-discovered) the importance of education and skills development in addressing unemployment, the transformative energy that hope gives an individual as well as the power of persistence and passion. I believe we have applied this knowledge in our project, to holistically develop the students of Marian RC High School and to empower the members of the Bishops Lavis community.

And I believe we have been holistically developed by our project as well.

In my 6 weeks in Washington D.C., I interned at WorldWatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet Portfolio. This is an environmental research institute, that focuses on food security and agricultural research. During my internship, I researched many technological and agricultural innovations looking to address food security and malnutrition, of which the Plantagon Vertical Farm is by far my favourite:

By 2050, Earth’s population will grow to 9 billion, according to the United Nations. This population growth, coupled with a rabid global urbanization rate, is increasing the pressure on urban areas’ infrastructure and services. Cities will need to find ways to adapt to absorb their new populations, who may become vulnerable to poverty and food and water shortages. One movement that looks to address urban poverty and food insecurity is vertical urban farming, and the Plantagon greenhouse in Sweden is one of the latest examples of this innovation.

Plantagon officially broke ground on their vertical greenhouse in Linköping in 2012. The Plantagon Greenhouse Project aims to develop a sustainable vertical farm that can function by using excess heat and waste from the nearby industries for energy and fertilizer. For this, Plantagon has three different vertical farm models: the integrated greenhouse, the parasite, and the stand- by Text-Enhance">alone greenhouse.

The integrated greenhouse is not just a greenhouse. In this model, there will be a façade system of panels on the exterior of the building that will host the cultivation boxes for the crops. The building itself will be used for other industrial purposes as by Text-Enhance">well as urban farming, maximizing land productivity. The façade system will have a conveyor belt that moves each plant in and out of sunlight as the cultivation boxes are carried downward floor by floor.

These boxes or pots will be fitted with an ebb-and-flow irrigation mechanism as well as nutrient reservoirs. The crops will grow as they slowly move down the conveyor belt, arriving mature and ready for harvesting in the basement levels. Harvesting will be done using an automatic harvesting machine, after which the pots will be reused for a new generation of crops. The parasite model was created as a façade or exterior system that could be attached to existing buildings.

The stand-alone greenhouse model will be constructed purely for the purpose of urban agriculture. One design for this model consists of a glass sphere with a helix-shaped transport ramp at its core. As with the integrated system, thousands of planting boxes will be slowly rotating downward toward a harvesting machine. The spherical nature of the greenhouse was designed to maximize the access to light for optimal crop growth, even in winter seasons.

Critics of the design say the unusual shape will increase construction cost, but Plantagon has justified the design by estimating that the Plantagon stand-alone greenhouse will yield three times the amount of crops a traditional vertical urban farm of the same size could.

Smaller versions of the greenhouse will commit to over-the-counter sales, while the larger greenhouses will have lower per-product costs and will most likely trade with grocery stores and restaurants. Plantagon believes these farms will be sustainable on their profit alone. In a growing world with limited space, efficient, easy-to-use and inexpensive innovations in urban agriculture—like the greenhouses designed by Plantagon—can be an important way to address food security and poverty in urban settings.

A team can merely be a group of people working towards a goal. Members of this team need not even be motivated by the goal. Their motivation can be individualistic incentive or dutifulness. Every individual can merely do her/his job, dispassionate about a goal that might not even be common to all.

Or a team could be the SAWIP Team of 2012; A team I have been honoured enough to be a part of.

The SAWIP team of 2012 was and is more than just a team. We were a group of people united by a common vision. Our thought processes, opinions, backgrounds, motivations and actions were not common to all. Yet the underlying love and dedication we hold for the development and potential of our country and people united our diversity and encouraged us to collectively work, plan and dream.

Our diversity also encouraged some robust dialogue. The multi-disciplinary nature of the team, as well as the range of personalities, allowed us to use every opportunity for peer-education. We were forced to consider every argument from a range of angles and interpretations, leading to a holistic understanding and problem resolution approach.

We did clash, but constructively. We challenged each other’s opinions not to be contrary, but to gain an understanding of what factors guided someone’s choice or mindset. And the spirit of camaraderie and respect always prevailed, keeping the peace between 15 powerful personalities.

And yet, this could all just describe the merger of some of the finest leaders of our generation. But the SAWIP team of 2012 transcended being merely a functional unit.

We became friends. To satisfy the nerd in me: a fellowship.

The team treated each other with respect, acceptance and care. We had the nurturing mothers and protective older brothers. In such a stressful, fast paced environment we managed to support one another, giving pep talks and allowing venting sessions. Friendship and laughter reined in our free times spent together, with discussion ranging from visionary to trivial.

I have grown to respect and love every member of my team. They have given this weird 20-year old geek a lifetime of wisdom, experience, laughter, critical thinking and acceptance. More than ever, I know my voice and I know my vision, thanks to my team.

And on a sentimental note: for us to hold on to all we learnt from SAWIP, we must hold on to one another. Professionally, I would be as blessed as to one day work with this team and network again, for the development of our country. And on a personal note, I would be as blessed as to remain friends with my team for the rest of my days. They have played a major role in my professional and personal development and for that, I will always respect and love you guys.

And attend your weddings.

I’ve been roaming the land of the free and the home of the brave as gaper, gazer, satirist and devoted tourist of Washington D.C. for approximately three and a half weeks, without being deported, publically humiliated or killed. This amazing feat has been achieved in the face of many idiotic incidents, where things were lost and found in translation, only to be lost again. Allow me to share a few foolish observations on the Washington ecosystem.

Transport, traffic and the lies they tell you in primary school: The haunting songs of primary school karaoke taught me to always look left, then right when crossing the traffic light. I need to constantly remind myself that these songs were not American imports, as my fellow commuters yank me back to reality and the pavement. Or wait, is that side walk? As my near death experiences have taught me: the right side of the road to watch for traffic is appropriately the right side. My fellow commuters have also taught me (with their confused stares) that referring to a traffic light as a robot brings up strange mental images seen on the cover of bad science fiction novels.

Rush hour on the metro is such a literal creature. In my naïve days, I used to stretch across the escalator step like I just received its property title. Now, I cower into the corner so that the important looking men in chinos or fierce looking women in blazers can fly by me. Or, when I don my own corporate cape, I fly down those stairs myself as if the revenues of a Fortune 500 company depended on it.

A fine kettle of fish: My lovely host family shocked and horrified me by revealing they did not own a kettle. They had swapped the medieval instrument for its more caffeinated cousin: the percolator. Forced to indulge in the hedonistic pleasures of the caffeinated bean, I became quite a morning person. A morning person with an extremely twitchy right eye. And when I discovered that Starbucks was literally around every corner, how could I not succumb to the aromatic allure of unnecessarily complicated coffee drinks, when the practice of drinking tea is apparently frowned upon?

Only at my office did I discover a kettle which, of course, led to compulsive tea drinking while at work. This, together with my “exotic” accent, led many of my fellow interns to the assumption that I must be British. My vast knowledge of cricket, the royals and Jane Austen does not help the matter.

Environmentally friendly ugliness: If you offered me a Prius two months ago, I (the amateur environmentalist) would have told you that the Prius is the ugliest car since the unsmart Smart car and that I would rather skateboard around town than pay a bucket load of money for it. However, the Prius has infected D.C. and each day I see a fleet of the green machine crawling across the roads; leaving behind a minimal carbon footprint, of course. These people are truly making a sacrifice for the future of their children, having to see that car parked in your driveway every day. Alas, I have now become so naturalized to D.C. that the Prius no longer offends my eyes; I can look at it for six consecutive seconds.

The curious incident of the laptop at day time: My host family lives in a beautiful neighbourhood, where I can stroll around at 01:00 a.m. at night and come home with all of my valuables. This suburban tranquillity has dulled my street edge (note the irony) to the extent that I abandoned my laptop out in the open of the garden to go procure some coffee. As I was waiting for the percolator to percolate, my South African spidey senses tingled. I hurled myself into the garden, only to find my laptop basking in the sunlight. I remind myself daily that these American tendencies will have to be left at customs...

We speak no Americano: Americans have a vast, vast catalogue of condiments. Tomato sauce is not on said list however, and when they receive an order for tomato sauce they panic and pour you a tall glass of tomato juice. Which I drank, right after asking for some “ketchup”. I was also dumbstruck to find that a scone is called a biscuit and a biscuit a cookie. Needless to say, that the confusion surrounding the naming of burgers almost overwhelmed me. In America, home of hamBURGERS and BURGER King, what South Africans perceive to be a hamburger is in fact a sandwich. Needless to say, my vocabulary has received many a raised brow.

These are not even the full spectrum of my foolish observations. I have gained a life time’s skills and knowledge in D.C., not just how not to die on the metro. For more serious reflections, see my other blogs. For less serious reflections, watch this space.

Good evening distinguished guests. Firstly, allow me to introduce myself: I am Edyth Parker, proud member of the SAWIP 2012 team. I had my generation Y membership card stamped on the 7th of September 1992, which confirms me as a current member of the controversial and much debated “youth of South Africa”. You might know our club by our other names: the "lost generation", "the young and the restless", "an appalling waste of human potential" or "a potential source of serious social instability."

You might also know us by the defining features of our club: unemployment and apathy. According to the National Treasury 42% of my South African peers below the age of 30 years are unemployed and not in institutions of education. In a country with a legacy of transformation through youth involvement and activism, these declining statistics frighten me.

Because employment is not only a means to generate an income. My unemployed peers are not being granted a platform to contribute economically to South Africa, which is psychologically, socially and spiritually disempowering. They are granted no social standing, leaving them vulnerable and discouraged from agency. They are not being equipped as independent or innovative citizens, as employment would have moulded them to be survavilists in a market economy. The psycologically disempowered are being moulded as a burden on our government, dependent on social grants and promises from politicians. In ten years the beneficiaries of state social grants have increased from 3.5 million to 15.1 million. Our youth has lost the belief in our power, in the traditional or political sense.

Which results in our second alleged defining characteristic: apathy. We are not engaging in the democratic channels of the country, because our needs are not being prioritised. The registered youth voters fell by 22% before the 2008 elections. Non-participatory democracy leads to a whole generation not being represented in political institutions by the vote. And again, the youth’s voice is not heard.

The portrait I’ve painted of the generation Y club is a bleak one, a confusing and greyscale Goya. Allow me to switch brushes and try painting a new, brighter face for our youth.

I am an undergraduate student at the University of the Western Cape, pursuing a degree in biotechnology. I was raised in a middle class neighbourhood, where all the children ate crustless sandwiches from Spiderman lunch boxes while playing on the well-maintained gym equipment. As I matured, I yearned for more exposure, more influences to assimilate and base my ethos and vision on. So I choose to attend a University historically associated with a demographic different from my upbringing.

It is here I met Aliyah, the beautiful face of a positive and promising youth.

The professor of my biology seminar informed the class that several students had approached him, three weeks before the exams, to tell him they could not fund their own textbooks. These youth were disenfranchised from education by the lack of resources. Aliyah took up their plight. She approached me and a few other students, asking if we would be willing to contribute towards textbooks for our peers.

But she did not merely ask us to hand over money. She mobilised the students in need, together with some of our peers to make bracelets, which we would then sell for profit. The money collected would be used to procure textbooks for the students who assisted in making the bracelets.

You see: Our youth is not necessarily apathetic. It is true that participation in formal politics by the youth is perhaps less frequent than the mass mobilisation of the previous generation, that characterized the breaking point in the Anti-Apartheid struggle. But the youth of SA are very much involved in more informal politics, or the addressing of public socio-economic issues at a community service level. The youth of South Africa is actively committed to addressing the needs in their communities; they have just lost faith in formal politics to meet these immediate needs. The issue that faces our youth is not apathy; it is estrangement from the political system.

But ladies and gentleman, this is not a dead end for youth development. Youth involvement in these unconventional politics of community commitment and service plays a great role in the holistic development of our youth. In their capacity as community servants, youth learn about leadership skills and social connections. Youth also acquire skills that enhance employability such as the recent voluntary construction of houses for the department of human settlements by 150 youths. Those youth are now skilled. They have a chance to procure employment and have thus won the battle against hopelessness

The informal politics of community service enhances the social capital of the youth; it fights of the frustration of feeling powerless in the face of your community’s problems by giving us tangible results. Hopefully the civic knowledge our youth will attain as community servants will also instil in them a civic responsibility that will translate to participation in formal politics as well.

I do not think Aliyah realised the genius of her scheme. At the practical level, she was addressed a socio-economic need by supplying textbooks. But she was also teaching my classmates how they could use entrepreneurship to create opportunities, all the while reminding their peers what our civic responsibilities were. She was even participating in skills transfer with these youths!

Our youth is not apathetic; we’re just unconventional, as all South Africans are. Incomprehensibly high unemployment rates have disempowered the youth economically and politically. So we have sought other means to meet the needs of their communities. I believe encouraging youth volunteer culture in South Africa allows communities to harness the vigour of the youth in solving problems; I believe it gives the youth back their voice and social status. It allows for personal growth and capacity development, enhancing the social capital of a nation of youths that was once described as “unemployable”.

I am extremely proud to be a South African youth, part of a generation that is not lost; we are just finding our feet in our own way.

Waiting on the world to change, by Edyth Parker

"Me and all my friends,

we're all misunderstood.

They say we stand for nothing,

and there's no way we ever could.

Now we see everything that's going wrong

With the world and those who lead it

We just feel like we don't have the means

To rise above and beat it

So we keep waiting

Waiting on the world to change

We keep on waiting

Waiting on the world to change.

It's hard to beat the system

When we're standing at a distance

So we keep waiting

Waiting on the world to change"

(abbreviated)

These simple truths are extracts from the John Mayer song aptly titled "Waiting on the world to change"; a song that has been bouncing of the walls of my head for the past two weeks, to my chronic annoyance, ever since I attended the SAWIP dialogue session on active citizenship. Mr. Mayer, not usually known for his political vision, has captured the voices (or lack thereof) of our generation perfectly. The song speaks of the despondency of the voiceless youth in the face of powerful opposition, be it government or something more abstract. It speaks of how impotence has bred passivity and passivity has progressed to apathy. And how the older generations now only see an indifferent generation who sit and wait on the world to change.

I realise it's not the jazzy-blues undertone that made this song my own personal theme music these two weeks. It was the raw truth that nagged at the back of my mind: our nation's youth was sitting around (listening to Mr. Mayer's other less visionary songs about illegal substances, perhaps) and waiting passively for the world to change.

During our dialogue session Mr. Vincent Williams revealed he recently spoke to a younger family member about youth involvement in civil society. The family member replied that the older generation had something to fight against; they fought for the liberation of South Africa from the Apartheid regime. The family member continued, questioning what the youth of today had to oppose. In his rationale, our generation was passive because we had no enemy to fight. And the older generation of struggle fighters consider us ineffective and purposeless.

I was shocked. How could an enlightened South African conclude there were no more battles left to fight? What of poverty? What of disunity? What of racism, sexism, classism and every other ism ism ism (as a British comedian once said)?

This statement sparked an interesting debate, about what drives a citizen to become active. A very wise member of the SAWIP 2012 team asked if a watershed moment was necessary. Did your life have to be directly affected for you to rise up and claim responsibility for your society's fate? Was a massacre needed to incite action, or could gradual awareness or an inherent sense of humanity dictate a person to take action? Does our generation need a tangible enemy to fight, as the older generations had in Apartheid? And if we do, how could we frame the face of the enemy to mobilise young people? How do you get a generation to fight an abstract enemy? Don't misunderstand me: there is nothing abstract about poverty or inequality. But there are no passes to burn.

I never had a personal watershed moment in my citizenship. I have not been greatly affected by crime, poverty, racism, sexism or classism. I have, however, become progressively aware of South Africa's modern "enemies" as I have grown older and attended University. A SAWIP team member shared that he had been raised as an active citizen in his culture, because to him active citizenship was merely a natural sense of caring for one's community. It was small acts like providing food to your lacking neighbours or tutoring a peer. It was Ubuntu.

This challenged a lot of views on active citizenship. I concurred: being an active citizen does not necessarily imply toi-toing infront of Parliament. It can merely be someone who creates opportunities to address the needs of her/his community, without depending on the state.

There is also a very negative side to active citizenship: the side that voices frustration by anarchy and destruction. By burning down schools and playing vigilante. The voice that has been sounding quite loudly in its discord of late, as our youth becomes all the more frustrated. John Mayer cannot tell me the youth of the Arab Spring was waiting on the world to change. They sought change, and fought. With youth unemployment at staggering heights, inflation on the rise and questionable service delivery by some branches of government, our youth is starting to become restless as well.

Will the South African youth wait for our watershed moment before we become active? Will this watershed moment come from economic frustration? Or disillusionment with the current government? Will it be as destructive as the previous generation's had to be to force action?

I hope not. South African youth, whether privileged or not, need to be made aware of the need in their community. If we are all raised as active citizens, with inherent selflessness, then we will never need to reach flashpoint to act. But that is in an ideal world. Till then, we can care for our communities. We can use innovation and personal agency to create programs that empower people to better themselves. We can volunteer at soup kitchens. We can start soup kitchens. If you have a skill set, engage in skills transfer and teach some one to metaphorically fish. Build a library for a town centre. Organise a community health class. Engage in dialogue. Be inquisitive to overcome ignorance. Integrate and orientate yourself in a South African reality.

All I know is (in the words of Mr. Mayer): "It's hard to beat the system, when we're standing at a distance" Let's minimise that distance. Holding our government accountable for our rights and their promises is one of the core principles of active citizenship.

I will end this brief encounter with an alternative ending to Mayer's song. He writes that "One day our generation is going to rule the population." I would like to add: "So no more waiting, we will make the world change".