By Tlotliso May

Activator Thabo Pitso is a Free State born Activator who, among other things, is very passionate about literacy and unemployment that has plunged our young people. He has collaborated with other Activators to ensure that they do the little that they can in their respective corner of South Africa, the Free State – as is the very purpose of ACTIVATE! Change Drivers, to cultivate leaders that do all that they can to ensure that they create a change in the corner in their communities, in order to realise a much bigger impact. Beyond being a seasoned Activator and leader, he is an approachable person that can accommodate anybody who wants to be in his space for any reason – a very good and required quality for a person who is a change driver in their community. He has been working in the library space from 2015 and endured the associated hardship of volunteering until late 2017. In his tenure of volunteering at a community library, he also assisted learners in both primary and high school and primary with their homework and ensured that they also got assistance with their assignments.

As an Activator, his work is almost never over. He also established a feeding scheme to assist children that are from disadvantages families. Without much resources and a desperate need for help, Mr Pitso and his partners had to offer help only to those children that really need help and restrict their helping hand only to those learners that show this need for help. In 2015 July and December, respectively he held an event where he and the people that he partners with. In partnering with Activators: Sebina Ramaseli & Gregory Molefi (2017 Activators) an organisation called H.O.P.E which served the same purpose of assisting young people who are from disadvantaged backgrounds. This project also targets days such as Mandela Day – for its inherent giving nature and Christmas in an effort to ensure that the said children are able to feel like others when this merry day is celebrated.

Activator Thabo Pitso joined ACTIVATE! network in 2016 upon being referred to it by another Activator named Tshepo Mabuya. Activator Thabo Pitso also alludes his reason for joining ACTIVATE! to be his genuine wish to change the lives of young people, he believes that once young people are given expression to challenge the status quo in their respective communities, they will do so with overwhelming excellence. His modus operandi is always putting his community – especially young people first in all that he wishes to do, as far as his community activism is concerned. In his endeavours, he exhausts the human resource that ACTIVATE! offers for Activators post training – as he has partnered with Activators more than once, which essentially creates cohesion within his corner of the network services the mission that Activators have to “Dare create the future”.

Thabo currently works as a librarian under a programme of literacy led excellently by Activator Action Setaka. Upon realising that there are little to no jobs in this country a partnership which fosters innovation came about between Activator Thabo and Mothobi Tshabalala where they held a CV – Clinic Day, where they teach young people about what they should include in their CVs and what they should leave out such that they are suitable and more favourable candidates for their desired jobs – this programme was held in Makeleketla, Windburg. Despite the apparent financial and resource predicaments, Mr Pitso continues to assist young people with their school homework and provides them with business advice from registration and general business advisory – free of charge.

The challenge that Activator Pitso faces in carrying out his projects with other Activators includes, but is not limited to; finance, venues that projects can be executed from but also marketing material to ensure that a maximum amount of people reached and avail themselves for the said help – these aforesaid predicaments equal to nothing to a man of his stature who has devoted his life to changing the lives of the youth , most of the times he willingly uses his own funds to ensure that he contributes to the well-being of the young people in his constituency.

In the foreseeable future, Activator Pitso is planning to launch a vernacular Spelling Bee competition which will both embrace the Sesotho Language and ensure that learners take interest in literature, particularly that which is vernacular based. He also intends to start an ECD upon his completion of the community development course. This making up part of the many ideas that he has as far as changing the status quo regarding the state of the youth in this country.