Student Case study
One teenager¹s story bears out the need for such youth mentoring programmes. This young man (who had a court order) joined the programme in March 2002. He clearly enjoyed the training sessions and in fact, chose to stay on at the end of the 12-week course period. He even started arriving to sessions half an hour early! As the programme progressed we saw remarkable growth in his character. He said that he found the self-development training sessions very helpful. The sessions challenged him to think long term about his life and potential career path. To his credit, even though he had to sit through self-development sessions a second time (i.e. when new youths joined the programme), he showed no sign of boredom. He put it this way - Œ you pick up things the second time around that you didn¹t the first time¹. In addition, he made great artistic and technical strides in the area of music production. His ability grew to the point that he was able to use the skills taught in the music studio sessions with little need of assistance from the trainer. In the period (close to seven months) that he was on the programme he produced several impressive pieces of music. He In fact expressed a strong desire to start a career in music production. This is remarkable because when he first joined the programme he had no idea what he wanted to do long-term. The fact that he later bought music studio equipment and set up his own studio at home is proof that he meant business. He raised the money for this by saving up and contributions from members of his family. With his studio up and running he would take unfinished music away from the Heartbeat studio sessions to work on at home. This was evidence of how far he had progressed in his discipline and commitment to positive goals. He later expressed a desire to go on an advanced version of the programme to build on his new skills. It is for youths like this young man that we plan to set up an arts and media school, so that they have continuity when they complete programmes such as ours.