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Life Skills radio outreach with YWAM19 May 2004 1000+ Students are being trained in life skills simultaneously at 15 different venues in nearly every major township of Durban, in conjunction with a special radio broadcast. World Changers Academy's (WCA's) focus is training young people from disadvantaged backgrounds in life skills and leadership skills. WCA runs life skills "empowerment" courses in communities across Durban and in the rural areas. It also run many leadership programs at its centre in Hillcrest, where students live. WCA trains community leaders, high school leaders, university student leaders, teachers, pastors and workers rising into leadership. At the moment, its life skills programs have been focusing on the unemployed, and it also has a few life skills initiatives for high school students. WCA is currently training over 1000 unemployed students in 15 communities across the city of Durban. This is for a four-week course in life skills that started on the 26th of April and finishes on the 21st of May. WCA also has a one-month radio license and is using this medium to teach for one hour a day (of the four hours that students come for). About 100 overseas volunteers are working with about 50 local leaders to facilitate these life skills courses. In addition, many of the nearly 200 speakers that World Changers has hosted in the year and half since its inception are speaking live at the various centres. WCA's course is not just like any other life skills course. The students' lives are being radically reshaped. Their mindsets about their lives, about work and about their communities are changing radically. People are turning away from bad habits and unprofitable activities and starting to make themselves productive in their communities and beyond. The nearly 1000 students that have been trained by World Changers in the last year have been greatly impacted and many have embarked on successful careers and life journeys. The original training centre established in August 2002, is now run by a former hard-core criminal who came out of prison two weeks before he started this first course. His life was radically changed and now he is impacting so many others. World Changers was founded by Joe White and Sizwe Mthembu. Joe is an American who has lived in the Valley of 1000 Hills for 5 years, being the only white man in the area. Sizwe comes from a very poor background in rural Zululand, but has achieved a level of success in his young adult life as a teacher, businessman and pastor. The volunteers from overseas working on the program are staying right in the middle of the communities where they are working (Umlazi, Hammarsdale, KwaMashu, Clermont, etc.). They are not only visiting the townships, but staying right inside them. In fact, one group of 10 in KwaNdengezi is staying in one two-bedroom house with 4 Zulus. One bedroom has seven guys sleeping back to back. They are experiencing the "real township life." WCA volunteers and leaders do not just impact people's lives by what they say, but probably even more so by what they do.
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