A Non-Profit Organization (NPO)Centurion, Tshwane, Gauteng, South Africa
Real guidance for young people.
Mona With The Children is a Bahá'í-inspired Non-Profit Organization (NPO) working alongside schools and families across Tshwane. We help young people find direction, and we do it by standing beside them, not in front of them.
What we do
Four ways we work alongside young people
- Community training and education development: helping learners build the skills and information they need to make good decisions about their future.
- Community social development: working alongside families and schools so that support reaches young people where they actually are. This includes feeding the needy, supporting orphanages and people with disabilities, and assisting families in subsistence farming.
- Community youth development: building programmes that grow with young people over time, not once-off events.
- Community Service: guiding young people towards serving their communities.
Our flagship programme
Career Guidance & Life Orientation
We run social-action presentations at partner high schools for learners in Grades 9 to 12. Each session is delivered by a professional volunteer from the field they're speaking about: an engineer, a nurse, an accountant, a businessperson, an NGO director, a web developer, a conflict resolution practitioner, a tradesman, a tourism professional or a coach, someone who has actually done the job.
The goal is simple: help learners make informed choices about tertiary education and careers, before they have to make those choices alone.
Our second programme
Junior Youth Moral Empowerment Programme
This programme works with young people in the years when they are no longer children but not yet adults, exactly when a strong moral identity starts to take shape. Small groups meet weekly with a trained facilitator, known as an animator, where young people talk openly and work out, together, who they want to be. The time is shared between study, discussion, art, games and service. One of the by-products of this is that it guides the youth towards community service. The materials, developed by the Ruhi Institute, deal with human dignity, friendship, justice and the power of language.
What sets the programme apart is what happens outside the meeting. Each group looks for something its own neighbourhood needs and does something about it: clearing a space, tutoring younger children, visiting elderly neighbours. The point is not the project. The point is that a young person comes to see themselves as someone whose contribution counts.
The programme is open to anyone. Taking part has nothing to do with what a young person believes.
Where we work
Real schools. Real partnerships.
Our Career Guidance programme runs in some secondary schools in Pretoria West. More relationships will grow as the organisation does.
A little of what it looks like
Photos and videos from our programmes
Where the name comes from
“We're named after Mona Mahmudnizhad, a young girl from Shiraz who was teaching children's classes when her life was cut short in 1983, at the age of seventeen, because of her beliefs. Her response to her circumstances was to teach children. That's the spirit we try to carry.”
Get involved
Whether you're a professional who'd like to volunteer your time, a school looking for a partner, or a family with a question: we'd like to hear from you.