Transcriber: Ibrahim Fayyad Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
At my old school, we weren't allowed to speak an African language.
Teachers even gave us detention if we did.
They said it would make people who didn't understand feel uncomfortable.
Yet other languages were spoken,
and there was never any consequences.
'I'm an Indian boy,
and my Life Orientation teacher asked me if I knew when I was getting my GTI,
and if I had decided on what colour I wanted.'
'You should be grateful for Apartheid, it brought civilization to this country.'
'I was the only girl in my class with curly hair.
Teachers would always jokingly ask if I had combed my hair that day,
and even said it looked dirty.
One teacher said that she had a friend who got relaxer,
and now her hair doesn't look so rough.
That day made me really sad,
and now I straighten my hair three times a week.'
'I'm a black boy and another guy in my dorm said:
"Geez, black chics stink!"
Then he tried to salvage the situation by saying:
"Don't worry, you're still my bro.
Black guys are just different to black girls."'
My name is Amonge Elito Sinxoto.
I'm a 17-year-old Xhosa girl from Johannesburg, South Africa.
I'm quite sad to say that these aren't fictional stories.
They're actual experiences of my own and my peers' youth.
I think we all remember that there was a time
when stories of youth in South Africa were much gorier.
The problem then lies with the shortcomings
in terms of dealing with that trauma
that's now left a breeding ground
for the kind of resentment and ignorance that I face in my world.
Another quite distinct characteristic of the world I live in
is the unavoidable presence of social media.
It's not quite a phenomenon to me and my peers,
but to those of you who lived in a time without television,
never mind the internet,
I think it's quite imperative that I explain to you
the life that we as a generation lead.
Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram.
I mean, this is how we retain information about anything and everything.
From breaking news to celebrity gossip, the latest blockbusters,
and where the party's at that weekend.
Uh, did I say party? I meant study group.
Anyways, the point that I'm trying to get across is that social media
has made everything just that much more accessible.
On that note, my point of conversation today is social media,
and transforming that into social impact.
Social impact can be defined in many different ways.
But I think these latter few generations
have started to look at it as having your voice heard,
and having that voice being significantly acknowledged.
I myself have noted four distinct landmarks than have been essential
in my journey of transforming social media to social impact.
Do you want to hear them?
(Laughs)
Okay.
So the first one for me was investing in a cause.
Now, investing in this context can be quite broad
because it can mean starting your own initiative,
supporting someone else's initiative, or even just doing the research.
You know, gathering the facts,
the information that makes the presence of this issue indisputable.
It's undeniable that our world has never been so environmentally damaged,
socially complex, or culturally challenging
So it's imperative that each individual has their own cause that they stand for
in whatever capacity that they wish to do so.
At my old school we had this thing called 'anti-litter Friday'.
Every grade would have 10 minutes
to run around the school and gather as much litter as we could find.
The world right now kind of reminds me of that time.
Only now we're just standing around with our arms crossed,
tweeting things like 'Guys, please pick up that fragile masculinity,'
and 'Please don't just leave your problematic opinions lying around,'
instead of everyone just picking up a load.
So I mentioned earlier, and I thought about the experiences of my peers and I,
the complexities of growing up in a disillusioned rainbow nation,
and I say that this is unacceptable,
that this is not only a constant but also a universal experience,
that Africans across the country and across the globe
face on a daily basis,
in a number of different environments.
For me, I first encountered it in school,
but others encountered it in university, the work space, corporate environments,
any time that we are forced to leave
an essential part of who we are at the door
in order to be considered tolerable.
So I had found my cause,
and it was giving a voice for the African youth to acknowledge their frustrations
in a non-judgmental environment.
This issue is and was one that is extremely close to my heart.
Firstly, because it's my own lived experience.
But secondly, because I decided it was time to stop waiting
for someone else to do something about it.
The next landmark is 'Find them'.
So there's actually two parts to this one
because there's Landmark 2, Subsection A, that pertains to your team,
your intimate squad, your posse, if you will.
People who are as passionate about this issue as I was.
I had to find them.
If we consider a person like Steve Jobs,
an incredible mind, no doubt about it,
but all that was achieved in his lifespan
in terms of transforming the scope of technology
is ode yes to his brilliant mind.
But more so to his grand team that did the actual work
to make the products available.
Nothing, and I mean nothing moves without the collective mind.
So this notion that there is this 'one' that's going to single-handedly
disrupt generational waves is incredibly false.
Then, there's Subsection B,
which pertains to the rest of the world.
I needed to find a way to make the rest of the world care.
If you think about it, in a span of 45 years,
handheld mobile phones have gone from non-existent to an essential
in most parts of the world.
All because a group of somebodies found a way to make it a necessity
to modern-day existence.
But first, they had to find a way to make people care about the issue,
which is this is where social media has been my greatest ally.
The initiative that I started to combat the cause that I was supporting
was started on Instagram,
where we shared stories of African youth,
and then it culminated into a website,
that then expanded to videographic and photographic content and campaigns,
promotions of seminars, programmes, and workshops,
but it all started on my phone.
Since then I've been invited to speak at Google and Facebook in Dublin, Ireland.
I've been invited to the prestigious Howard University, in Washington, DC.
Because of the something that started on my phone.
And even most recently, invited to an intimate round-table discussion
with former first lady Michelle Obama,
all because of something that started on my phone.
Social media allows for a vast global connectivity.
And then there's landmark number three,
which is 'Preparing and populating a remedy'.
So it's all good and well to have a cause and having people who care,
but if I wasn't actively seeking out a solution
or promoting the implementation of the solution,
then it was all kind of meaningless.
It was important that I didn't feel pressured to have some perfect solution
before I started implementing,
because probably I wouldn't have started,
and secondly, there was so much that I learnt along the way
that I could have never anticipated in the deliberation room.
Finding a remedy was a developmental process for me.
So I mentioned earlier that my cause was giving voice to the African youth,
and I thought the best way to do this was to equip ourselves for the future.
And what would that mean?
Well, my answer was 'leadership'.
So that's what we did - gave voice to the African youth
and developed them through leadership training and mentorship.
I'm talking seriously investing in developing young Africans as leaders
that were going to navigate developments of the future.
Social media in terms of populating the remedy
has been extremely instrumental in that regard.
But don't get me wrong, not everything has been quite as photo-shoot fresh
as it would seem.
And the last but certainly not the least is to be consistent.
Now, this is probably one of the most challenging ones
because it never essentially ends.
But it's quite important because in this ever-changing
and oh-so-fickle way of the world today,
people have come more and more to appreciate consistency.
In Michelle Obama's new memoir entitled 'Becoming',
she explains an instance that quite clearly highlighted this last point
that I want to leave with you.
Her husband, Mr. Barack Obama,
had just stepped more intensely into political light.
The family planned a trip to Hawaii, and they finally made it after much delay
to those few days of family fun and much needed rest.
Right in the middle of the trip, Mr. Obama gets an urgent summon to report for a vote
and their trip is cut short.
Their daughter Malia gets terribly ill,
and they decide there and then that she's unfit to fly.
They both stay while she's recovering,
and it results in Mr. Obama missing the vote.
Now, any reasonable person can recognize that these are strenuous circumstances
and respect his decision to stay.
But the media frenzy that followed this perceived the former president
as self-indulgent and not having the best interests of the country at heart.
This was quite an eye-opener for me
because they failed to see the alignment of his actions and his agenda,
which highlighted that I not only needed to be consistent in my work,
but I needed to be consistent in my singular public image
because it always needed to correspond with the cause.
So that's it, that's me, that's all I've got from you.
These four key landmarks that were essential in my journey
to solidify the relationship between social media and social impact.
Thank you.
(Applause) (Cheers)