The important work of Queen Monareng has been featured here before. Her organization, Botjha Ke Palesa, helps create awareness in South Africa about teen pregnancy and its underlying causes, such as alcohol abuse, gang culture, and unemployment. Given the developments of 2020 and the global pandemic, we thought it would be worth speaking to her again to see what challenges the organization has been facing as well as what Queen Monareng has been doing to overcome them.

How has COVID-19 affected your organization’s efforts?

The situation with Covid-19 has made it very difficult for us. As a youth organization, most of our programs consist of in-person events, such as discussions and awareness sessions. So, the limits that have been placed on gatherings have made it hard for us to continue with our daily basic jobs. Our main focus, after all, is to empower our communities by trying to find the problems they are facing and then coming up with solutions to them. To do that with all the Covid-19 regulations, especially when there is this one big, overarching problem, has been nearly impossible, particularly for our arts crew.

Are there any new endeavors that you have taken on in connection with COVID-19?

We really had to have our management team sit down and try to find other ways to make the organization work somehow in these difficult times. We have been doing activities online and have still been trying to help people find skills programs. We still have some scholarships and study programs in partnership with several companies, but we are still looking for other partners to further our skills development programs.

What do you think are the greatest challenges that lie ahead for the young people you are trying to help?

As we all know, the unemployment rate in our country is very high. Not everyone has access to social media, nor can they necessarily afford smartphones. We can encourage people to do online programs as much as we want, but many will still be at a disadvantage because they will not be able to get the information we are trying to send them. On the other hand, some do have smartphones, but nevertheless, as many parents have lost their jobs, their children remain in a very difficult position. We are still doing our best to see that we can somehow still make changes in our community.

Taking into account all the experience that you have now gained, what advice would you give to people who may face challenges similar to what you have been through?

Never give up on what you believe. Keep pushing no matter how hard it may be.

We still have young people who need help, and we need to support them as much as possible despite the difficulties. There are no excuses not to do our best for them. It is difficult to get funding especially in our province here, but that means we may have to work harder in other provinces. Everyone has to do their part, and if you do that, then God will keep blessing those hands and bless the hands that give all the more. We need to still focus on the main reason we started this organization and that is to help our young people.

We humbly ask that if there are any development companies that could partner with us to empower more young people, please come forward and contact the Botjha ke Palesa young organization on Facebook. If we work together, we can effect true change for the people of our country.