5 Minutes With Danielle
DANIELLE PETERS
PROVINCE: Durban
MUNICIPAL DISTRICT: Pinetown
Activator since 2014
What’s your passion?
Young children and trying to shift young people’s focus from only seeing what is happening around them to trying to see what is happening in our world.
What change are you keen to drive?
More development of young people in communities, helping them find out “What is my path?” I notice a lot of young people generally just do things because they’ve been told or because their circumstances dictate that to them.
How are you driving change?
I am part of a project called YMC Squared, which stands for Youth Mentors Collaboration for Change. We take young people out of their comfort zones into different parts of South Africa and Africa and make them more aware of the social ills happening in the world. We try to make them more socially conscious and development-minded.
How has ACTIVATE! supported you so far in driving this change?
ACTIVATE! has given me more focus and allowed me to see that there are other young people around me who – while we may not be passionate about the same things – we share the same passion. It’s exciting because it put me in an environment where there are like-minded people that I can talk to and share with and learn so much from, which has helped me a lot. ACTIVATE! has made me stronger and given me an extra reason to push for what I want, the change I want to see.
How do you motivate yourself?
Prayer and my mother, knowing where she’s come from – she was orphaned at six-years old – and what she’s achieving in her life now as the Programme Director of Gold Peer Education, it makes me think “Okay, my situation is not really bad”. I see I have more to give. Another motivation is other activators around me, when I hear about the things they are doing, I think “Okay, if they can do it, I can do it too”. We [Activators] are constantly checking up with each other and that helps me.
Final comment?
You don’t need a lot to make a big difference. Whatever you have in your hands, whatever tools you have right now is enough for you to impact somebody else’s life. The passion within you, the way you think and the people that surround you is more than enough to effect change.
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