The founder of the Dr SB Radebe Foundation has urged school children to carefully choose their role models.
At a career expo for young people, hosted by the foundation and the Department of Home Affairs, on Saturday June 10, Prophet Samuel Radebe said children must be careful of following the easy life and celebrities who have no purpose in life.
Mr Radebe and Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, Fatima Chohan, spent half a day with hundreds of pupils, with Mr Radebe telling them the expo was part of his initiative to see that children were adequately prepared for their future careers.
“My message to them is (simple): choose your role model.
“To be famous is very easy these days. To appear on television is very easy. One can appear for useless things.
“We have put this career exhibition together for you. It might not matter today but when you are older it will matter.
“You will remember that there was a day like this put together for you. Pay attention. Use this space.
“All these exhibitors that are here today are here to empower you. We have invested in the Dr SB Radebe Foundation because of you. The future is yours,” he said.
He said a lack of career guidance for pupils in the townships remained a major challenge and that the main objective of the career expo was to expose pupils to different careers and information about them.
The foundation said more often than not, children finished matric without knowing what career they wanted to pursue-or why they wanted to go into a particular line of work.
Foundation spokeswoman Babalwa Manuel said the youth career expo would help children make up their minds about what they want to do in the future.
“We started with a library in 2015 and now we are growing.
“We want to inspire generations.
“But today we are giving the youths great opportunities.
“We appreciate the partnership we have with the Department of Home Affairs,” she said.
Ms Chohan said she was excited that hundreds of young people were exposed to career opportunities and new ideas at the expo.
She said she collaborated with the foundation because their aims spoke to the department’s wishes. “We want to act as conduits.
“We also have a Good Citizenship programme where we visit schools with our women political stalwarts.
“We have about 15 stalwarts, we visit schools and speak about good values and respect. We teach them about their rights and that they need to know to respect the rights of others.
“We convey the value of hard work and the stalwarts adopt schools. That creates role models. This programme today speaks to us,” she said.
She said there is a gap at schools regarding careers and the idea was to expose children to things they did not know or had never dream of.
