[MUSIC] So here we are trying to solve this problem, and immediately we have to start thinking about what resource do we have? So the first realisation was that a lot of the young people we are working with, they had exposure to be it, evolve with drugs. Some of them were drug addicts. And that experience, we found, was actually quite resourceful. Because they knew exactly what people were experiencing, who were going through what they've been through. The second thing that we found was, because there was a shortage of counseling centres, didn't necessarily mean that more counselling centres was going to solve the problem. So they then started thinking about what is the one way of how we can actually share our experiences with people in the community? And the one thing that most people had access to at the time was mobile phones. And because of the popularity of mobile instant messaging chat, like Mxit at the time was very popular, very similar to the WhatsApps of today. They then started to say is there a way we can start using and leveraging this communication tool to start sharing our experiences with people? But of course that meant that we needed to have access to a way to manage these conversations. We needed to have access to the Internet. And then we started talking and thinking about, who do we know in the community that have an access to an Internet connection? And the only group we could actually find was an organization called Impact Direct. And truth be told, the only Internet connection they had was a dial up connection. Which wasn't the most efficient way of doing things, but at least it gave us access to the internet. And they had one old computer, a 386, that when you loaded up, I think it kind of loaded up in when it's in advance, to kind of get it going. But immediately the team started looking at what is the available resources that we have. Not just our own experiences, but the things in our community that we could use to start solving the challenges in our community. So immediately realizing that we wanted to use mobile phones, we had a bigger problem. None of the team actually knew or understood how to use technology. So that meant that we actually had to think about how do you provide training skills to these young people in our community? Who firstly, have dropped out of any formal education, they've never touched a computer in their life before. When we asked them the question, what do you know about computers, the only thing they knew, they told us was how to steal computers. And that was actually what we had to start it with. So because of my personal technology skills and doing a little bit of training in technology, I then thought, okay maybe we should actually go and teach them how to use the power of the Internet, but we didn't have access to computers. Like I've mentioned, we only had one computer running on a dial-up connection. And here we had a team of 14 young men and women that wanted to learn how to use a computer. Immediately, we then started looking around, and we found that there was one of the local universities that actually said that we could use a computer lab on a Saturday morning. But the other challenge we had was the university was a 20-minute drive away, and we only had one vehicle, so we had to do multiple trips on a Saturday morning, to get the team there, to teach them and introduce them how to use the power of technology. And there was no catering, so we had some of the mothers from the community, they started making sandwiches to provide catering, and here we had the entire community coming together, because we had a group of young men and women that wanted to be the change in the community that they wanted to see. Through this we thought how are we going to pay for the internet connection? So we started having some of the people doing fundraisers to try and support the community organization, so they can pay the telephone bills. And all of these things then showed us firstly that when people come together, that there's an opportunity for them to actually become quite resourceful. The second thing we saw was we saw that every single person, it doesn't matter how small it might be, you had something to contribute moving towards solving the problem. [MUSIC] My contribution to RLabs has been, well, a lot. I needed to give back to the community that I once used to disempower. So and that contributed as a whole to the RLabs creative vision, which was to give back hope to communities. And so my role has been just that, just being part of the organization, and then, as the organization then became structured, I took up different roles from helping to set up our HR to just if it means I have to wash windows or sweep the floor or clean the kitchen. It was in different roles. My contribution to RLabs has been on a Saturday, because I started on the Rlabs, the moms 2.0 classes. That was back in 2010. So my contribution towards RLabs now is giving back to the people that used to sit in sessions and give sessions to me. So on a Saturday now what I do is a lot of, not young but ladies, that I give classes to, basic computer training and basic social media training. So they between the ages of 19 to 87. [MUSIC] So now that they've got these newfound technology skills, the big thing for them was, how does this all fit together? I mean, they know now, understand how to do messaging. On the computer, they realised that they can also utilise the Internet to gain a deeper knowledge or understanding of how to formulate their experiences. At the same time, we still had the challenges that was in our communities. And for many of these young people, they even started thinking could they potentially utilise the power of the internet to provide counselling services to people via their mobile phones. And I mean, this was a crazy thought, right. I mean a couple of weeks ago, these were these young men and women that were struggling, and finding themselves in the community causing a lot of kind of disempowering our community. And here they were thinking about how can we actually empower our community using our experience firstly, secondly, having an understanding of the problem, and thirdly, leveraging this new skill that you've learned called technology. And this became a very interesting journey that we then started embarking on. [MUSIC]
