Ayanda Cuba

Community Youth Heroes

Nominee's Province:
Western Cape

Age:
31

Project Name/Description:
ABCD Concepts

More info:
https://www.facebook.com/abcdconcepts

When Ayanda Cuba, 31, and Buntu Matole, 32, met for the first time in 2014 as students at the Raymond Ackerman Academy of Entrepreneurial Development in Cape Town, they could scarcely have imagined they would someday be pioneering drivers of ABCD Concepts, a ground-breaking initiative that fosters socio-economic development in Khayelitsha through sport and tourism. Formed in 2015, ABCD Concepts uses sports – soccer and basketball – at schools and within the community to get youngsters motivated about life. This forward-thinking organisation also attracts tourists to the township for a variety of township experiences. Today, ABCD Concepts runs a soccer programme with these Khayelitsha schools: Chumisa Primary, Molo Mlaba and Thembelihle High Schools, and then basketball with Khayelitsha Special School. ABCD Concepts stresses teacher involvement in the sporting programme so they could help monitor the development of learners. When coronavirus stalled the sporting programmes, ABCD Concepts turned to community outreach activities by distributing food parcels and masks to the needy. “It is easy to try to change my community with the little that I have because I know first-hand how my people live. If I had grown up in a different environment, I most probably wouldn’t look at life the way I do,” Cuba says.