I recently had the privilege of speaking with Tine Jakarasi, founder of the As I am Foundation. She shared stories from her journey in creating her foundation (As I am), the Take a Child to School Initiative (TACTS), being recognised as an Obama Young Leader and most importantly, learning to use her challenges with endometriosis to help other Zimbabwean women.
In our conversation some of the key takeaways include:
Using your life and platform to empower others
Turning pain into power
Making a change and being part of the solution
To listen & watch the full episode check out the link below:
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To reach out or follow Tine you can find her on:
Personal
As I Am Foundation
Below I have left my favourite story from our conversation:
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Tine: "So I've been in the nonprofit NGO sector for six years. My main passion is health and wellness but when you go into rural and peri-urban communities, somehow you can't go and tackle one thing, everything is connected. So you go and you want to do a tour, perhaps the kids are hungry, or the people are hungry, which means you have to, you then have to tackle food security or whatever it is. So what actually happened with Take a Child to School (TACTS) was, it was the week before my 28th birthday. I had gone for a regular workshop, we were doing on consent, because in that particular time, there was a huge, huge issue about transactional sex in that area, in that specific area. Because a lot of children were being taken advantage of and not realising what it was.
So that they actually brought on someone else to speak to the kids about the legal perspective of it, and because I'm not well versed in that and I went outside, and I saw a girl, I think her name was Princess. She was standing outside. So I asked her what's wrong? She then said that “ndadzingwa” (I’ve been kicked out). So she's been told your parents haven’t been paid fees. She's standing outside, and I'm thinking, Okay, so if that happens, and you go home, what happens next? I would like to think that it was God at that moment.
So I went with her to the office, and I said, How much is this actual fees? And I think at the time, they said, 65 bonds, which is equal to two bucks (USD) at the time. And I literally took out my phone, I paid for the fees. So that week was my birthday and I then decided, you know what, let me channel whatever I'm going to get towards this. So that's how Take a Child to School was born.
Initially, I said let’s help just 10 kids and people jumped on it. At some point, Take a Child to School became even bigger than my other projects. Because I think the thing people, understood is that it's education, you don't have to explain it, every child deserves an education."
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Be Inspired!
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