Children in need: From studying to helping
By Steve Herring
Published in News on July 31, 2017 5:50 AM
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Jay Bravo shakes hands with children who live in an orphanage in South Africa. Bravo is participating in a study abroad program, but when he discovered the children need help, he began a GoFundMe campaign.
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Jay Bravo said he was nearly brought to tears by the extreme level of poverty he has witnessed in South Africa -- especially at an orphanage for young children.
"I kept my composure, but it just takes your heart out of your chest," Bravo said in a telephone interview from South Africa. "The basic commodities we have in the U.S. like a bathroom, you don't think about it, and these kids don't have that.
"They don't have blankets. They don't have clothes -- all of the luxuries that we overlook every day. They don't have it over here. So when it is kids, it really tears you up inside."
The children range in age from just a few months to about 5.
But instead of surrendering to a sense of being unable to do anything, Bravo has been busy raising money and has started a GoFundMe page for the orphanage.
Bravo, president of the Wayne County Young Republicans Club, is a student at Duke University studying law and theology.
The university offers grants to study abroad on almost every continent. Bravo chose Africa because of the racial reconciliation component of the grant.
"It is in line with my political aspirations so I wanted to study more about racial reconciliation," Bravo said. "So this grant is based on studying racial reconciliation, effects of apartheid in the community. Then it gives me the opportunity to work with HIV AIDS patients, refugees and orphans."
Bravo arrived in South Africa at the end of May and will return home in August. He is stationed in Durban which is by the Indian Ocean side of the country.
"I have had the privilege to teach school children English, assist with the AIDS Centre, and teach leadership seminars to the Nyusa Project and guest speak at various locations to include the prestigious Kearsney College," he said. "I also have the opportunity of working in the various townships, the Hillcrest Aids Centre, many of the schools, and orphanages.
"No one day is ever the same on my trip here, but during my various work -- from teaching leadership to students or working in various orphanages -- this particular orphanage was in such dire straits I had to act."
The children first looked at him bewildered.
"You know a Spanish guy comes walking in, and they have never seen one before," he said. "What I love about kids is that they don't see race. They don't see class. They don't see any of that. They just see a person comes in and you are a good person.
"They climb all over you. They jump."
He said the orphanage is operated by an older woman, a grandmother -- affectionately known as a go-go in the Zulu culture. Her name is Ngitheri Jemina Gwamanda. The name of her orphanage is Asiphile Creche.
She is in dire need of new buildings, a security gate and proper lighting because of the many child abductions, Bravo said.
"She cares for 60 children with little food, little running water and no bathrooms -- just a bucket until I stepped in and started raising funds -- bathrooms are now being built," Bravo said. "My goal is to reach over $200,000 -- closer to $300,000 to provide everything she needs structurally, and security wise.
"This woman, she is a poor woman, and she took on 60 kids. There is a systematic problem here with kids getting kidnapped and victimized. This woman with little to nothing takes these kids in. She takes care of them. She teaches them in a little pink building that is a school."
Bravo said that what broke his heart was that there are no bathrooms.
"Typically you try not to get too involved," he said. "You work in the communities so that you don't overstep the mandate. But this situation, I knew I have to do something, and I had to do it myself. So in raising some of these funds we were able to start building bathrooms, and we have other aspirations.
"I started a GoFundMe page just because it was the easiest way for people because people were saying they wanted to help."
More than 20 people have already contributed.
Bravo said that $200,000 is his "pie-in-the-sky" goal. The GoFundMe link is gf.me/u/s5y3n.
All of the money will go to the orphanage so that the children will have a decent place to stay, he said.
The trip has also provided Bravo with the opportunity to learn about the different effects of apartheid on the society, and the many battles that lie ahead.
Bravo said his experiences in South Africa have strengthened his principals or views and has led him to appreciate certain principles of non-racialism, a social theory that Nelson Mandela adopted into the South African constitution.
Non-racialism entails envisioning a nation bound together under a common identity and by a sense of shared destiny, Bravo said
"I feel Mandela's belief in non-racialism in regards to seeing beyond race, past sins propagated by the government, and labels is needed and could be useful in the betterment of our community and our nation as a whole."