Finding your ‘why’ at the Linc Foundation

Finding, understanding and committing to your reason for being was the challenge given to the enthusiastic audience at the Linc Foundation launch at Linc Church last week.

Linc Foundation’s managing director Cath Slevin said her cause was to uplift the poor around her through targeted education and employment programmes.

“The heart behind this foundation is to build lives that build a better nation. We are a country filled with people with incredible potential, yet we have big challenges. I want to see it in a much better place than it currently is by helping form well rounded people,” said Slevin, who started the Foundation in 2017.

To reach this goal, they have five programmes in place:

1. Step Ahead which promotes social-emotional health amoung the youth;
2. Read to Me focuses on improving lives by improving literacy;
3. Work 4 a Living empowers youth to break the cycle of poverty for themselves;
4. Red Band Army recruits candidates from Work 4 a Living and trains them to become baristas;
5. Love Week which brings light and hope through simple acts over Mandela’s birthday week.

Motivational speaker and adventurer Sibusiso Vilane fueled the evening with inspiration explaining how his ‘why’ made him the first black person to summit Mount Everest.

He said the seed was planted by former British high commissioner to Swaziland John Doble with whom he climbed to the peaks of the Drakensberg in 1996.

“I was given the opportunity to become a game ranger, even though I had no idea what it was. I saw backpackers arriving, paying money to go climb a mountain and sleep in a tent only to return a few days later with blisters on their feet. I didn’t understand it. One day John Doble asked if I could take him to the top of the mountain,” said Vilane, who grew up herding goats and cattle in Swaziland until, at the age of ten, he was given the opportunity to go to school.

For the full gallery click HERE

“He wore a nice pair of polished moccasins. He was falling all over the place during the hike and I was worried that something would happen to him because the King would not have been happy with me. He said I climbed with such ease and agility and asked why there are not more black mountaineers. He told me to climb Kilimanjaro, but I did not understand why I should.”

After some thinking time, he found his reason why he should.

“Africans have not done this and so my why was to represent my continent – I said I will do it for Africa.”

He made it to the top of Kilimanjaro in 1999 followed by the Himalayas and then the mighty Mount Everest in 2003.

“I teamed up with 12 strangers from seven nationalities. We all had one common goal – to help each other to the summit. It does not matter where you come from or what you have done, what matters is what you want to achieve.”

Despite the grueling weather conditions and continuous setbacks as they had to postpone their final summit various times, Vilane said it was his why that kept him going.

“When you get up at night shivering at minus 30 degrees you wonder, why am I here? You can only overcome those rough times when your why is deep rooted and personal. I was carrying a continent and knew this was just an obstacle which I can overcome – it is a mind thing.”

Do you want to receive news alerts via WhatsApp? Send us a WhatsApp message (not an sms) with your name and surname to 061 718 4438.

Please read our WhatsApp broadcast list disclaimer.
Join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram