Terry-Lee wants to fight for people’s rights

BETHAL – Ms Terry-Lee Kleynhans (32) has been an activist and volunteer for the DA since last year.

She got involved after she saw posts of DA Councillor, Ms Mariaan Chamberlain, and decided she wants to help people as well.

“I began to attend council meetings and saw how the councillors fought for the best interest of their people and I realised I want to do that as well and get involved with the DA,” said Ms Kleynhans.

She grew up in Secunda and Carolina and finished her matric at Hoërskool Hoogenhout.

She instead grabbed the opportunity to work as a quality controller at Sasol where she worked full time for several years.

Ms Kleynhans now invests all her time into outreach actions where she hands out food to the needy or volunteers to help the DA.

She still works at Sasol during shutdown periods.

One of Ms Kleynhans’ other passions, is to feed needy people on the streets and help them to enable themselves to be employable.

“I got it from my parents. They are both very caring people and they have always been helping others.

“When I got involved with the DA, I felt like I had a passion again for the first time in five years.”

Ms Kleynhans formed a non-profit organisation, Legit Hope, with three friends that focuses on street people.

“We handed out food to these people weekly and I spoke to the street people and they said they do not have the tools to search for jobs.

“They said they do not have CVs, IDs, a place to bath or get ready to go to job interviews.”

Ms Kleynhans then took these people’s concerns to heart and helped them to set up CVs, gave them 10 copies to hand out to businesses and she was surprised at the positive response.

“I would say we had about a 60 per cent success rate.

“Some of them got full time jobs and a few of them got short term jobs, but at least it is something.”

Legit Hope’s next project will be to teach children in orphans life skills and spend some time with them.

“They do not have parents to teach them the basic things in life and the foster parents or mother at the orphanage, do not always have time to give personal attention to each of the 30 or more children staying there,” said Ms Kleynhans.

She wants to take her CV project to Bethal soon and said she wants to make a difference in people’s lives.

If Ms Kleynhans is not volunteering for the DA, she coaches netball and cricket at Hoërskool Secunda and is proud that one of her teams is one of the top 24 teams in South Africa.

Ms Kleynhans began a WhatsApp group for Bethal residents to keep them updated and informed.

If you want to be part of this group, send her a message at 079 053 9498.