Our First Stop: (Stellenbosch)
Welcome back to our blog series for LIFT4LIFE! We are so excited to share all of our adventures this summer with you and discuss our achievements and future plans. Amongst our many stops this summer, our first was in Capetown South Africa where we met Eugene Scheepers, a college student at Stellenbosch University, who has a similar vision to our own.
Eugene’s goal is to use powerlifting and other sports as an avenue to reach disadvantaged and troubled youth in the areas around his university. So naturally, we detoured our trip to Zimbabwe and went to meet him to learn more about this passion he has to help his community. So after landing in Capetown we were off to Stellenbosch to see his vision first hand.
Eugene took us all over Stellenbosch to introduce us to the great parts of the University area. Then, he brought us five minutes outside of town to see the very community which impassions him. Upon arriving, the landscape was strikingly reminiscent of Zimbabwe. The low economic housing, the palpable atmosphere, and simply the overall appearance of the community bore a strong resemblance to what we were familiar with. That being said, we immediately fell in love with his vision of uplifting this community. Now, South Africa is a country that already has the sport of powerlifting, so our role in this country would be slightly different. However, once we saw the area first hand and met Eugene in person, we could clearly see that our visions on how we use the sport were closely aligned.
The next few days were spent getting to know Eugene and helping him lay out and plan as to how to achieve his dream of uplifting this community. In many ways we are now his partner, but above all, we are his support team as we help him plan and grow his vision until it becomes a reality. Our time spent in Stellenbosch was truly priceless, and we look forward to the work Eugene will be doing. We certainly plan to continue to help him upon his way to solidify his goals and we hope we have made a lifelong friend as well!
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