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.
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