James is an 18-year-old orphan who lost both parents to HIV/AIDS when he was just 12 years old. He grew up in the care of his elderly grandmother, who survives on a small pension. Despite their poverty, James excelled academically, consistently ranking in the top 5% of his class.
The Challenge:
When James completed secondary school, he was accepted into university to study Information Technology. However, with no funds for tuition, accommodation, or supplies, his dream seemed impossible.
Our Intervention:
James was enrolled in our Youth Leadership and Skills Development Program, which provided:
Full university scholarship covering tuition, books, and accommodation
Mentorship from a senior IT professional
Internship placement at a local tech company during breaks
Progress:
Currently in his second year of university
Maintains a GPA of 3.8/4.0
Volunteering as a coding tutor for younger students in his community
Built a mobile app for his village's cooperative savings group
His Words:
"I was told I would never make it. But this program gave me a chance. I want to use my skills to build technology solutions that solve problems in my community."
Support Needed:
James needs continued sponsorship for his final year of university and support to launch his community technology project.
Make a Difference Today
Your generous donations help us continue our mission to support education and provide opportunities for deserving students.
Islam and Christianity promise eternal paradise to the faithful. And that is a powerful opiate, certainly, the hope of a better life to come. But there's a Sufi story that challenges the notion that people believe only because they need an opiate. Rabe'a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seem running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, 'I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven of fear of hell, but because He is God.
John Green, Looking for Alaska
Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship--be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles--is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.
David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein
Sometimes success isn't about making the right decision, it's more about making some decision.
Robin S. Sharma, The Leader Who Had No Title: A Modern Fable on Real Success in Business and in Life
Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
William James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy
