Usually they say young people are lazy and they don’t want to work, that they sit around on their phones all day and chat to their friends. This may be true for some but not for all.
Trinity Munro is one of the exceptions. Trinity is a grade 10 learner from the Michael Oak Waldorf School and she came to the FunDza office to learn what we do.
It’s very difficult to teach a young person about publishing, especially if you haven’t grasped all the processes yourself. From the outside it is seen as a glamorous industry but when you’re in it, it’s really a lot of hard work. So how do you demonstrate to a young person the daily grind without boring them to death? Well, you give them some tasks and let them get elbow deep in some of your daily activities.
Trinity visited us for four days. This was ample time for her to learn the fun and the ugly of publishing. She had to type hand-written work from the Fanz, edit some poetry and capture data from poetry we’ve published. The latter is rather a tedious chore but when you have a young person who is eager to learn then it is suddenly not so boring.
I was amazed at Trinity’s genuine interest in the content and the other programmes we run. She was ready to lap it all up.
Her respectful nature was something I cherished; I thought all the girl could say was “please” and “thank you”. But I soon learned when I was completing some paperwork from her that Michael Oak prides itself on the values that we grew up with and some have long deserted.
I loved it best when she took her lunch; she would close her computer up and even go sit somewhere else, leaving it behind. This novelty was something I used to do when I first started working at FunDza, but I later lost it and now I’m accustomed to lunching at my desk as I work. Not healthy, I know. But Trinity doesn’t know yet that there aren’t enough hours in a day, and I wasn’t going to be the one to drop the bomb on her. So thanks to her, I sat away from my computer that week during lunch and actually felt refreshed when I returned.
That week ended with FunDza hosting the Cell C Take a Girl Child to Work Day and Trinity was surrounded by 6 other girls. During lunch I caught a moment when I saw Trinity and one of the girls chatting about their schools and being at our offices. They both were beaming and giggling and when the day ended and we said our goodbyes, both girls said that they couldn’t wait to come and volunteer at the FunDza offices again when next they had some free time.
That Thursday Trinity had a sweet surprise for us, a little thank you she had brought wrapped with love. But she couldn’t have been more surprised by the little surprise we had for her; one of the copies of a book in the Trinity series.
It was a week well spent. And so the girl from Michael Oak left and took her magic with her… now I’m back to eating lunch at my desk.