More than 600 Mitchell’s Plain youth, students and parents attended a career expo at The Church in Westridge (CIW), on Saturday June 15.
Courtney Edwards, a teacher at Cedar High School of the Arts in Rocklands and one of the first group of bursary recipients of the Mitchell’s Plain Bursary and Role Model Trust, hosted the event.
He has also been the chairman of the Motsepe Foundation Alumni, since 2017. The foundation financially contributed to the last two years of his teacher training.
Mr Edwards said the expo was designed to provide career opportunities to the youth of the Western Cape; to link students to funders and study opportunities at various institutions; to open doors to youth to follow their envisioned careers; and to be used as a tool for those ambitious youth to reach their horizons.
“As June is the month of the youth, the expo was a good tool for those ambitious to further their horizons and to pay tribute to the hundreds of students, who lost their lives in the fight for freedom and the many rights, we as youth enjoy today,” he said.
Youth Day, marked on June 16 commemorates the Soweto youth uprising of 1976 when pupils took to the streets in opposition to the apartheid government’s directive that Afrikaans be used on an equal basis with English as a language of instruction in secondary schools.