SOCIOTECH BBL FACILITATOR: Zenobia Isaacs
Zenobia says…
My BBL journey has definitely helped me to gain confidence and focus. That doesn’t mean that I have all the answers. I think we women often put ourselves down. We think that we are not good enough and I still have moments when everything feels overwhelming – especially since my growth with SocioTech has taken me into such new spaces – but I do increasingly feel like I know what I want to achieve. I am learning to always plan my life journeys and track my progress along the way. It is like driving a car, you need to make sure you know where you are going. Just driving around without direction gets you nowhere.
So much about my life has grown and changed. Even my name. My real name has always been Zenobia but in Onseepkans – where I come from – everyone calls me Barbie. It’s a nickname that I got when I was a little girl, and it is cute, but I think maybe that image was holding me back. At SocioTech I am Zenobia. And that reflects the journey I have taken with SocioTech. I am starting to understand who that woman Zenobia really is, how she has changed, what she has achieved and what she can still grow into being. Some of the changes are on the outside – a job, a driver’s license, speaking languages other than Afrikaans fluently – but the most important changes are on the inside.
When SocioTech first came into my life in 2020, I was feeling very down. There had been a lot of death in my family. I had matriculated several years earlier with big dreams, but I had got stuck. I was afraid that I was going to be in Onseepkans forever. It is beautiful and there are wonderful people there, but it can be a difficult place to live. There is so much poverty and such a lot of expectation – our parents didn’t have the chances to study that my generation now has, so they look to us with such high hopes. That can be a heavy weight to carry. The reality is that there are very few jobs and studying further costs money we don’t have. If you can’t get work or find a bursary and you see others getting ahead, you feel like a failure. I think that this pressure leads to a lot of depression amongst young people.
I have always been a person who likes to be involved in the community. When SocioTech came I was already part of the church youth group. For several years we had been organizing fundraising events, such as Nama dancing contests on SASSA days. I was also involved with local soccer and a volunteer reading facilitator at the school. But I think I had got a bit stuck in my personal development. I didn’t know how to identify opportunities that would advance where I was in my life. SocioTech’s BBL MyFuture teaching gave me the push I needed. It showed me that the future was still there for me. I needed to be shown how to identify the opportunities. It showed me that I needed to apply what I was doing for others to my own life as well. The MyFuture training did that for me. The change didn’t happen right away. After the first session, I decided I wasn’t going to come back, but when I didn’t pitch to the next training, the BBL Facilitator came to my house to find out why and I am so glad he did.
He saw that I was a community activist at heart and that I had networks into other people like me who cared about developing our area. So, he started calling me the week before he arrived to get people motivated and to remind them about the training. Then he challenged me to start helping him with the training sessions. After a few months I was running sessions on my own. Because of my experience teaching at the school, I was comfortable with training people. As more and more people started to come, I gained confidence. In hindsight I realise that this is a very effective method we use at SocioTech to help people discover and use their talents – including for facilitation. Most of our team at SocioTech became facilitators through this same process!
My first trip to Gauteng was when Marna and Caroline brought me to Pretoria as part of the BBL second economy Knowledge Tour. Our group was made up of soccer lovers, mostly youth. We learnt so much, and I was so energized by everything I saw. It showed me that there is hope for us. It helped me see that what we were busy with was valuable. Even though it was only a short trip, it was hard to leave my family and I really appreciated that Marna went to my mother and asked if she could bring me to Pretoria – that made me feel like she understood where I came from, and the worries that parents and children have about change. Even when it is good change it can be frightening.
From there I was given the chance to work as a SocioTech facilitator based at the Gauteng office. My first contract was between July and December 2022 and for most of it I was so overwhelmed… I know English from a school textbook, but I wasn’t used to using it every day. And English was just the beginning – I have needed to learn so many new languages; Zulu and Sotho. I had no driver’s license, and I didn’t have any friends or family in Gauteng. I kept thinking to myself: ‘Just make it to the end of the year and you can go back home.’ And then they extended my contract, so when December came, I thought just be brave and push through a bit longer, keep going until Easter. And when Easter came, I realized that there were still things to learn.
I was so lonely – I had never been without my family before. The wonderful thing is that over time, even the participants became like my family. They would tell me ‘you are so young, and you come from so far away and we think you are so brave’ and that made my heart glad. Kind words kept me strong. If they thought I could do it, I could do it. When they said ‘we are proud of you. Keep going. Keep inspiring us,’ I knew this was my calling. We help each other. Working together feeds us all – when they encourage me, I am filled with the strength to encourage others.
When the work I was doing started to show results, that also gave me strength. It is a wonderful feeling when participants on the SocioTech WhatsApp groups send messages like ‘thank you so much for enabling me to bring food to my table.’ Their success stories give me such a boost. The joy and faith of the participants keeps me going. At Christmas time, one lady told me ‘thank you so much. Now I have food on my table and our festive season was plentiful and joyous.’ Those messages made me work even harder. Even when I was feeling most uncertain, the support of the participants told me that I was doing the right thing.
I think one of the reasons that I am so committed to my work, is that I know those difficult times and the challenges that the participants are experiencing. I have faced many of the same challenges. When I first went to the Eastern Cape, I could see that the surroundings were very different to where I grew up, but I had seen many of the same problems. I recognized myself and my journey. I said to the participant: ‘These are big challenges but if you push, you can change your circumstances. Sometimes it will feel hard, but the results will be worth that push.’
I believe that these supportive relationships are the key to so many good things. People holding up people. It is a good thing when an organization like SocioTech supports a community, but it is an even better thing when you see individual people in that community making connections between themselves. Now I see that is what those Onseepkans SASSA grant day dance contests were all about. They were opportunities for people to connect. Next month I am organizing a beauty contest in Merafong. My hope is that the people who attend will enjoy it, but more than that, they will get together, sell products and create a support system so that one day if SocioTech can no longer be there, they will still stand together.
I am making it sound easy, but even now there are tough days and challenges. I still have moments when I doubt myself. For instance, on the day that I passed my driver’s license, Jabu said to me: ‘your truck is waiting for you at the office’. That big bakkie! Reversing it is still a challenge for me. But each time I think I can’t do this, I remember my lovely, inspiring participants and they motivate me. If they can do it, so can I. One of my greatest inspirations is Paulina in Maubane. I talk about her wherever I go. She is so creative, always looking for opportunities and her faith never wavers. She tries new things time and time again. Her lemon syrup, lemonade, and avocado oil are doing so well. She reminds me that energy and determination can move mountains.
If I had to give people who are beginning on the SocioTech journey one piece of advice, it would be not to let self-doubt hold you back. Everyone has moments of uncertainty, but if you can believe in yourself, learn and implement, positive change happens. You can achieve good things, so work to make them happen.
My BBL journey has definitely helped me to gain confidence and focus. That doesn’t mean that I have all the answers. I think we women often put ourselves down. We think that we are not good enough and I still have moments when everything feels overwhelming – especially since my growth with SocioTech has taken me into such new spaces – but I do increasingly feel like I know what I want to achieve. I am learning to always plan my life journeys and track my progress along the way. It is like driving a car, you need to make sure you know where you are going. Just driving around without direction gets you nowhere.
So much about my life has grown and changed. Even my name. My real name has always been Zenobia but in Onseepkans – where I come from – everyone calls me Barbie. It’s a nickname that I got when I was a little girl, and it is cute, but I think maybe that image was holding me back. At SocioTech I am Zenobia. And that reflects the journey I have taken with SocioTech. I am starting to understand who that woman Zenobia really is, how she has changed, what she has achieved and what she can still grow into being. Some of the changes are on the outside – a job, a driver’s license, speaking languages other than Afrikaans fluently – but the most important changes are on the inside.
When SocioTech first came into my life in 2020, I was feeling very down. There had been a lot of death in my family. I had matriculated several years earlier with big dreams, but I had got stuck. I was afraid that I was going to be in Onseepkans forever. It is beautiful and there are wonderful people there, but it can be a difficult place to live. There is so much poverty and such a lot of expectation – our parents didn’t have the chances to study that my generation now has, so they look to us with such high hopes. That can be a heavy weight to carry. The reality is that there are very few jobs and studying further costs money we don’t have. If you can’t get work or find a bursary and you see others getting ahead, you feel like a failure. I think that this pressure leads to a lot of depression amongst young people.
I have always been a person who likes to be involved in the community. When SocioTech came I was already part of the church youth group. For several years we had been organizing fundraising events, such as Nama dancing contests on SASSA days. I was also involved with local soccer and a volunteer reading facilitator at the school. But I think I had got a bit stuck in my personal development. I didn’t know how to identify opportunities that would advance where I was in my life. SocioTech’s BBL MyFuture teaching gave me the push I needed. It showed me that the future was still there for me. I needed to be shown how to identify the opportunities. It showed me that I needed to apply what I was doing for others to my own life as well. The MyFuture training did that for me. The change didn’t happen right away. After the first session, I decided I wasn’t going to come back, but when I didn’t pitch to the next training, the BBL Facilitator came to my house to find out why and I am so glad he did.
He saw that I was a community activist at heart and that I had networks into other people like me who cared about developing our area. So, he started calling me the week before he arrived to get people motivated and to remind them about the training. Then he challenged me to start helping him with the training sessions. After a few months I was running sessions on my own. Because of my experience teaching at the school, I was comfortable with training people. As more and more people started to come, I gained confidence. In hindsight I realise that this is a very effective method we use at SocioTech to help people discover and use their talents – including for facilitation. Most of our team at SocioTech became facilitators through this same process!
My first trip to Gauteng was when Marna and Caroline brought me to Pretoria as part of the BBL second economy Knowledge Tour. Our group was made up of soccer lovers, mostly youth. We learnt so much, and I was so energized by everything I saw. It showed me that there is hope for us. It helped me see that what we were busy with was valuable. Even though it was only a short trip, it was hard to leave my family and I really appreciated that Marna went to my mother and asked if she could bring me to Pretoria – that made me feel like she understood where I came from, and the worries that parents and children have about change. Even when it is good change it can be frightening.
From there I was given the chance to work as a SocioTech facilitator based at the Gauteng office. My first contract was between July and December 2022 and for most of it I was so overwhelmed… I know English from a school textbook, but I wasn’t used to using it every day. And English was just the beginning – I have needed to learn so many new languages; Zulu and Sotho. I had no driver’s license, and I didn’t have any friends or family in Gauteng. I kept thinking to myself: ‘Just make it to the end of the year and you can go back home.’ And then they extended my contract, so when December came, I thought just be brave and push through a bit longer, keep going until Easter. And when Easter came, I realized that there were still things to learn.
I was so lonely – I had never been without my family before. The wonderful thing is that over time, even the participants became like my family. They would tell me ‘you are so young, and you come from so far away and we think you are so brave’ and that made my heart glad. Kind words kept me strong. If they thought I could do it, I could do it. When they said ‘we are proud of you. Keep going. Keep inspiring us,’ I knew this was my calling. We help each other. Working together feeds us all – when they encourage me, I am filled with the strength to encourage others.
When the work I was doing started to show results, that also gave me strength. It is a wonderful feeling when participants on the SocioTech WhatsApp groups send messages like ‘thank you so much for enabling me to bring food to my table.’ Their success stories give me such a boost. The joy and faith of the participants keeps me going. At Christmas time, one lady told me ‘thank you so much. Now I have food on my table and our festive season was plentiful and joyous.’ Those messages made me work even harder. Even when I was feeling most uncertain, the support of the participants told me that I was doing the right thing.
I think one of the reasons that I am so committed to my work, is that I know those difficult times and the challenges that the participants are experiencing. I have faced many of the same challenges. When I first went to the Eastern Cape, I could see that the surroundings were very different to where I grew up, but I had seen many of the same problems. I recognized myself and my journey. I said to the participant: ‘These are big challenges but if you push, you can change your circumstances. Sometimes it will feel hard, but the results will be worth that push.’
I believe that these supportive relationships are the key to so many good things. People holding up people. It is a good thing when an organization like SocioTech supports a community, but it is an even better thing when you see individual people in that community making connections between themselves. Now I see that is what those Onseepkans SASSA grant day dance contests were all about. They were opportunities for people to connect. Next month I am organizing a beauty contest in Merafong. My hope is that the people who attend will enjoy it, but more than that, they will get together, sell products and create a support system so that one day if SocioTech can no longer be there, they will still stand together.
I am making it sound easy, but even now there are tough days and challenges. I still have moments when I doubt myself. For instance, on the day that I passed my driver’s license, Jabu said to me: ‘your truck is waiting for you at the office’. That big bakkie! Reversing it is still a challenge for me. But each time I think I can’t do this, I remember my lovely, inspiring participants and they motivate me. If they can do it, so can I. One of my greatest inspirations is Paulina in Maubane. I talk about her wherever I go. She is so creative, always looking for opportunities and her faith never wavers. She tries new things time and time again. Her lemon syrup, lemonade, and avocado oil are doing so well. She reminds me that energy and determination can move mountains.
If I had to give people who are beginning on the SocioTech journey one piece of advice, it would be not to let self-doubt hold you back. Everyone has moments of uncertainty, but if you can believe in yourself, learn and implement, positive change happens. You can achieve good things, so work to make them happen.
