My name is Songo Fipaza and I was born and raised in Kayamandi in Stellenbosch, South Africa—a former black township located one hour from Cape Town. Kayamandi is home to over 30,000 people living on just 106 hectares of land. Just under half the population live in informal settlement dwellings. Over one-third of residents are unemployed. The community is struggling with many challenges, especially substance abuse, which I believe is strongly connected a lack of facilities to meet community needs. Currently, Kayamandi has two primary schools, two high schools, and two sport fields. 

To help fill this gap, starting in 2008, I worked with local and international athletes, non-profits, and companies to build an afterschool cycling and tutoring program in Kayamandi (www.songo.info). The project includes a BMX program where we take kids from 5 to 14 years-old and teach them to ride bicycles, and a mountain biking program for kids 14 and older. Kids come to the clubhouse after school and work with a tutor to complete their homework, and then work with a coach on their cycle training. On the weekends, they take part in sport events around the country including BMX races, mountain biking events and stage races, and duathlons. 

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It is my dream to expand this program to include swimming. Despite living only a short drive from two oceans, very few children in Kayamandi have the opportunity to learn to swim. There has long been a false stereotype in South Africa that black people cannot swim. Even though the kids don’t know how to swim, many often go to unsafe places to swim on hot days—like local dams on nearby farms or other unsupervised areas where no one is monitoring their safety. My dream is to build a pool within Kayamandi itself to offer swimming programs for the kids. This will not only open up a whole new sport for them, it will help ensure that they have a safe, supervised environment to swim in. 
 

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