A third-year student from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences has been selected to attend the Global Youth Consultation for the World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) in Doha, Qatar from today (1 September) to 2 September.
Ms Lea Koekemoer, a third-year BA Humanities (majoring in Political Science and History) student is one of 100 youths from across the world to be selected from over a 1 000 applicants to attend this event, which is hosted by Reach Out To Asia (ROTA).
ROTA is a "Qatar-based development agency that empowers local communities by providing access to quality primary and secondary education to children affected by crisis across Asia".
The Global Youth Consultation is organised by the WHS Youth Working Group and the International Federation of the Red Cross and supported by the WHS Secretariat. The Working Group is facilitated by the United Nations Major Group for Children and Youth.
According to the WHS, the "Consultation is aimed at engaging youth from different backgrounds and different experiences to discuss where youth stand in the current humanitarian landscape, what they can provide to the field, how the world can better maximize their potential and how youth can have a stronger voice in humanitarian issues".
The first World Humanitarian Summit, which is an initiative of the UN Secretary-General, will be held in Istanbul in May 2016 and will concentrate on bringing together the global community "to commit to new ways of working together to save lives and reduce hardship around the globe".
Koekemoer, who has been involved in community interaction and volunteer initiatives throughout her life, said she decided to apply for the event after she saw a notice stating that applications for the Consultation had been extended.
"When it popped up on my Facebook newsfeed, I thought, let me give it a try."
"I applied for the Global Youth Consultation because I really have a passion for helping communities and it is something I strongly believe in, however, I also feel that worldwide humanitarian work has not managed to make communities self-sustainable in the long run," says the 20-year-old South African who moved to Swaziland with her family when she was five.
Since joining Stellenbosch University in 2013, she has continued their family tradition of giving back to others by implementing a life skills-orientated development programme at Klapmuts Primary, a local school based in a disadvantaged community.
"Our family has always been involved in community interaction. It is something we did as a family each December. We would take a few children between the ages of 4 and 6 from an orphanage which was run by my mom's friend and we would take them to the hot springs for the day. We would spend the day swimming – something they don't often get to do – play games and have a braai," explains Koekemoer.
During high school, she continued to pursue this passion as her school, Waterford Kamhlaba United World College of Southern Africa, was "particularly focused on community service".
Her project at Klapmuts Primary School was developed in conjunction with the school in 2013 after it identified a need amongst Grade 5 learners to develop important life skills. Many of these learners come from households headed by young, single mothers who do not always have permanent partners in their lives.
"Many of these moms had their children at a young age – some as young as 14 or 15 – so they have not had the opportunity to complete their schooling, which means they are not highly educated and can therefore not educate their children beyond a certain point. Some of the things we teach the learners are very basic life skills such as what happens to your body at various stages of development or the kinds of careers that they can pursue, but while these are things we take for granted, it is something that these learners do not know about at all."
Koekemoer, who has been involved in the project up to this point, will be stepping down next year as the new student leadership at Academia – the residence that drives the project – will be taking it forward with her fulfilling an advisory role.
"It's still early days, but we have noticed that a lot of kids' behaviour has improved, especially with regards to their emotional intelligence. However, I feel that we will only see the real improvements in the learners four or five years down the line. The aim is to transfer skills to the current learners so that they can transfer those same skills to a broader community. We are already witnessing the older kids passing their knowledge to their younger siblings and other learners. In the end, the aim is to equip the school community with the skills they need to run this project on their own. Then we can leave and start the process in a new community again."
Koekemoer hopes to apply the same principles she has applied in developing the Klapmuts project to make an impact on a global level by participating in the Youth Consultation.
"Working with MGD (Matie Gemeenskapsdiens or Matie Community Service) has taught me that communities need to be supported in ways that allow a project to be sustainable even if the student partner leaves. In going to the World Summit, I hope to make an impact from that point of view and work towards campaigning for humanitarian policies that has sustainability at its core. With the World Humanitarian Summit next year we will have UN General Assembly members and leaders of countries as well as non-governmental organisations in attendance and as youth, we can have a stake in this platform and hopefully also influence policy by what we discuss and do at the Consultation.
"Across the world, the youth feels that pumping money into humanitarian work and aid is not the solution anymore. There needs to be more concrete actions, better knowledge transfer between those who come to assist and those who are being assisted, and a better understanding of what communities need by listening to them. You cannot serve a community's needs because you think you know what they need. They are better positioned to know what they actually need."
This, says Koekemoer, is something she learnt through implementing her own project in Klapmuts.
"I could not arrive there with my own ideas about what they needed, but rather needed to hear what the community wanted. They are far more in-tune with what they need on a daily basis than I am, a student who lives a life far removed from their own."
* View a video of the project which Koekemoer has implemented at
Klapmuts Primary school here: https://youtu.be/jx5CQGVSEVo
Photo: Lea Koekemoer at Klapmuts Primary School with some of the learners that she mentors. (Supplied)
