President’s Awards a huge success

School learners and teachers from around Limpopo Province gathered at the King’s Court to receive awards for their commitment and dedication in the president’s awards. 
Merensky High School, Standford Lake College and King’s Court Christian School are the three schools around Tzaneen that participated in the awards. 
The President’s Award for Youth Empowerment is a registered non-profit organisation with Public Benefit Organisation status registered with the South African Revenue Services (SARS). Founded in 1983, under the banner of Gold Shield Award and in 1994 was re-launched as The President’s Award for Youth Empowerment with Nelson Mandela as Patron-in-Chief. In its 31 year history the Award Programme has reached over 130 000 young South Africans. Affiliated to the Dukes of Edinburgh’s Award, which was started in 1956, The President’s Award for Youth Empowerment is a full member of the International Award Association, which oversees Award Programmes in over 140 countries globally, with 25 of these being in Africa. 
With guidance from an adult Award Leader (teacher), every young person is encouraged to reflect upon their interests, abilities and ambitions and set themselves challenges to in four different sections of the award. Open to young people between the ages of 14 and 24, the award programme‘s basic structure consists of four sections namely community service, adventurous journey, skills development and physical recreation which can be achieved at Bronze, Silver and Gold levels.
Four learners from Merensky High school were awarded Bronze awards with one receiving both Bronze and Silver awards, 15 learners from King’s Court Christian School received Bronze awards and from Stanford Lake College 14 received Bronze awards with four receiving Silver awards.
The day was a huge success with a very positive attendance. Parents gathered to see their children being awarded for the good work put in the award participations. 
“It started with a teacher called Kurt Hahn who worked with young people and believed that young people were becoming unfit, lazy, lacking initiative, lacking imagination, didn’t develop skills, lacked self-discipline, and showed little compassion for others. This was in 1904. So he set schools which sort to address this. One of his students was Prince Philip the Duke of Edinburgh who set up the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award in the United Kingdom in 1956. The awards recognize adolescents and young adults for completing a series of self-improvement exercises modeled on Kurt Hahn’s solution to the problems of the decline of modern youth. Kurt Hahn’s family crest has the words “there is more in you than think”. And these sums up what the award seek to draw out of each of us…that there is more in us, we just don’t know it. Congratulations to those who receive certificates today. To the Bronze award recipients don’t stop. Make it a goal to get to silver. And to the silver award recipients, challenge yourselves to make it to gold. It’s not easy but the benefits are huge, from your own personal growth to the big plus on your CV. In conclusion, we can’t always control what happens to us at school at home or out there, but we can control how we react to it, whether it’s good or bad and what we chose to do about it. And the one thing in life that you can change is yourself, but sometimes that makes all the difference to you and the world” said Brian Dawson, former head of Stanford Lake College and former executive director of Round Square. 
Willemien van Niekerk from Merensky High School and Matthew Venter from Stanford Lake college both received certificates of recognition for the good work they have done and the commitment put in by their learners.