Boys to men
The Character Company brings in stable and strong male figures to mentor boys who hail from less than ideal backgrounds, showing them the right way and teaching them about life.
There’s nothing more important to children’s development than having strong, positive figures guiding them into adulthood. It is difficult to figure out life all by yourself, and a good role model may mean the difference between making it or not.
This is what the haracter Company is all about. “We’re very serious about taking action and believe in talking less and doing more,” explained founder Jaco van Schalkwyk. “We’re actively and decisively changing our country by raising boys to be good men. Taking young boys through our mentorship programme, we are changing our society so that things like rape, violence and crime should not be the norm of the day.”
The Character Company brings in stable and strong male figures to mentor boys who hail from less than ideal backgrounds, showing them the right way and teaching them about life. “We need FAT men!” Jaco said, explaining that FAT stands for faithful, available and teachable, which clearly encompasses what each of these men stand for in their own lives, and what they mean to carry over to their mentees.
In the end, they hope to instill an overpowering sense of courage, kindness, self-discipline, honesty and respect into the five- to 10-year-olds they work with through various weekly programmes and age-specific activities. The Character Company also regularly hosts weekend activities for mentees and their families, have various camps throughout the year, provide support to single mothers, and generally tends to focus on boys with absentee fathers.
“Based on statistics from the Character Company,” Jaco said, “four out of five boys in South Africa grow up without a father or positive male role model. This campaign will help to put more MENtors in key communities across South Africa so that we can intentionally and practically address key issues like gender-based violence, racism and corruption by raising our boys to be good men.”
With these goals in mind, the Character Company recently started a collaboration with Morné Basson, a.k.a. The Treadmill Guy, for the #Bthat1 campaign. Morné set out to cycle a total of 5 184 kilometres over 72 days to encourage people to pledge R72 (at least) a month to the Character Company.
“We need men to stand up. We need you to #Bthat1. We want to put up a protective fence around our country. We need people to lock arms and stand together to support one another. We need to show our children, women and other men that we care.”
To donate via BackaBuddy towards #Bthat1, visit: https://www.backabuddy.co.za/champion/project/bthat1
