Spoky's Story

It was my first full day in Port Elizabeth.  I already was being whisked away by Siya to Motherwell, one of the city’s largest townships, to check up on a few coaches who were struggling with students at an area high school.  Upon arriving to Cingani High, we were greeted by four coaches, each wearing matching red polo shirts with their names and the Grassroot Soccer logo embroidered across the chest.  We were only there for a few minutes watching the coaches attempt to wrangle up a bunch of rowdy teenagers for the afterschool session until Siya says that we have to return to the office for a meeting.  My first chance at seeing a live GRS intervention would have to be reserved for another day.

Not even a week later, I had been tasked with writing short biographies about two coaches that Port Elizabeth would be nominating to represent Grassroot Soccer at the 2013 One Young World Summit being held in Johannesburg.  One Young World is an international organization that gathers young people from around the world to make positive change.  Other than the Olympics, their annual Summit is the only youth-dominated event that brings together representatives from as many countries.  The conference brings together young leaders and global powerhouses to share ideas of how youth can change the world and provides a platform for them to exchange ideas and make connections.  Grassroot Soccer would be sending two representatives from each country in which it operates, and it sought two nominees from each site from which to choose.  The PE staff seemed to decide instantly who they were going to nominate.  One of them was a sweet young lady named Spokhazi.

That same week, a bubbly girl comes into the office to drop off identification documents, and I put the pieces together that she was Sphokazi, also known simply as Spoky.  I introduced myself to her saying that I wanted to interview her briefly to write her bio to send to the Cape Town headquarters, and she reminded me that I had already met her in Motherwell on my first day.  I apologized, owing the fact that I didn’t recognize her to the fact that I was struggling with all the new faces I had been seeing over the past week.  She had forgiven me for the mishap, and we started the interview.

What was supposed to be a ten-minute chat ended up being a two-hour conversation.  We discussed anything and everything, from comparing our lives, since we were only a month apart in age, to the price of bananas in our respective countries.  She immediately put me at ease with her welcoming tone and friendly smile, and I knew then that I wasn’t going to mess up and forget her the next time I saw her.  I felt so comfortable talking to her, as if I had been speaking with a longtime friend, even though she was a girl from the other side of the globe who I had only met a week prior.

Fast forward two months later.  Spoky was speaking of her life-changing experience at the One Young World Summit to the rest of the coaches during our Friday morning development session.  I sat there listening to her eloquent words, proudly hearing about everything she had learned, all the people she had met, and the impact she wants to make in the future because of it.  It was our initial conversation that inspired my one paragraph reflection about Spoky which eventually led to her being chosen to represent Grassroot Soccer at the conference.  Though I know that it was Spoky’s personality which sold the deal, I’d like to think I had a little to do with the ultimate decision to pick her.

A few weeks ago when I got to tell Spoky that she was going to Johannesburg for the One Young World Summit, I had a huge smile on my face.  The trip would be her first time on a plane and also her first time out of the Easern Cape province.  She would be meeting delegates from around the world, being in the midst of some of the world’s greatest thinkers, leaders, and entrepreneurs.  I was so jealous of the experience she was about to have, but I had no idea how much it was going to open her eyes about the world around us, and most importantly, I had no clue how much it would unlock her own potential.  In the few weeks between finding out that she would be attending as a delegate to the time she had left, I had prepared her for the entire trip, from helping her with registration materials to figuring out logistical details about flights and transport.  The fact that she would be staying in one of the ritziest areas of all of South Africa put a smile on her face, and I knew she was going to have the time of her life.

Listening to Spoky’s account of the conference could not live up to how enlightening it must have been for her on the ground.  From being able to be amongst the huge crowd at the opening ceremony at Soccer City Stadium, having breakfast with Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, speaking with Mohammad Yunus about being a Grassroot Soccer coach, to all of the dialogues in which she was able to take part about relevant topics like education, youth unemployment, HIV, and something that she is especially interested in: gender based violence. 

A major theme of the entire Summit was youth empowerment, and I could tell immediately upon her return that she was more confident now than when she left.  Spoky talked about eating breakfast with Kofi Annan one morning.  As she listened to him speaking about the empowerment of young people, she kept pinching herself to figure out if it was really happening.  She said that at times like these, you do some self-evaluation.  She posed the question, “Where do you stand amongst the great leaders that we can become?”  Seeing the impact that people like Mr. Annan, Spoky admitted, “made [her] realize that the work that [she does] does not end in Port Elizabeth.  It’s part of a bigger concept.”

A very meaningful lesson that Spoky discussed was about what it means to be a leader, and her reflection is something that I’ve been trying to convince myself for a very long time:

“There are different kinds of leaders…  You don’t have to have money, you don’t have to be famous.  Being a leader starts small.  You start with the little changes that we do, and we become leaders through that little change.  Most people picture leadership as those who are in Parliament or already doing big things, but you, as yourself, are a leader in your own right.  We were empowered to continue to do the work we are doing, and to do it more often, because that’s how we can change the world.”

After hearing Spoky’s story, I realize that it’s these narratives that I seek to hear because they share a tale of empowerment, passion, and drive.  These are the stories I have the responsibility to share from the voices I am driven to amplify.

One striking figure from the One Young World Summit was that despite being held in South Africa, only a mere 20 of the 13,000 delegates were South African.  It’s important to hear the stories of young people and provide these kinds of vehicles of global communication because the voice of youth is often silenced because they are viewed as inexperienced, idealistic, and naïve.  It’s even more important to highlight the stories of people like Spoky because they are even further buried in disadvantage and poverty, as too many young people from poor communities never have the chance to stand up for themselves.  But these are the particular voices we have to listen to the most because they have a lot to say.  And the fact of the matter is that they also have so much potential to make a change.

Malala Yousafzai comes to mind immediately as someone whose power lies in her voice - the voice of a young female in a broken society where that voice is never heard.  Her story represents all of the young girls just like her whose rights to education were stolen, and her voice resounds with the all of the voices of girls who have suffered in the same way.  It is because she is young that her voice is powerful, because even in her limited years, she has already seen enough injustice and is wiser than people two, three, or four times her senior to do something about it.

The fact that there were only 20 South African delegates does not signal disadvantage.  To me, and to Spoky, shows progress and opportunity.  That there were twenty South African voices shows that there are even more stories to be told from voices just like theirs.  The presence of these voices at the One Young World Summit shows that there are places out there where young people like Spoky are given a platform to tell their stories to people willing to listen.  One day, there will be more South Africans part of international dialogues like these, and the twenty young South Africans this year, Spoky included, are trailblazers.

Something that stuck out to me in Spoky’s retelling  of her experience was this: “One Young World made me see the potential in myself that I sometimes doubt.  I got to see beyond what I am and show qualities I didn’t know I had.”  Sometimes, it takes some inspiration for someone to realize the true potential of their voice, and now that Spoky has been enlightened of her own, I am confident that now, as a One Young World Ambassador, she can unlock that potential in others.