Thank you Programme Director,  Good morning educators, learners, madam speaker

I believe that matriculation opens a door to a whole new world of possibilities and opportunities. You are at a critical stage of your career. Matric is the beginning of your academic and professional career. Now, you cannot afford to be influenced by negative talk that there are no jobs in the country.

I want to encourage you that do not let other people define your world for you because they will define it small for you. The fact that you are in Matric is proof that you have potential to define your destiny. This would mean making serious and sometimes difficult choices. These choices would be studying when you should be chilling or hanging around with friends.

You have a choice to pass Matric or fail it. We do not fail because we want to fail. Everything that we do is dependent on making right choices. We have to have a good company of friends to help us reach our goals.

Matric is a groundbreaking period of your life. The choices you make today will determine where you will be tomorrow. Doing Matric and writing your exams is a key to the world of immense opportunities. It does not mean that you will not face failure and disappointments. Failure is not fatal. Failure is not permanent. Failure is not eternal. Remember that when you fail, you can get up and move on and learn from it.

It doesn't matter that your dream came true if you spent your whole life sleeping

Today, you are not limited when it comes to choosing your career. Today, you can be an Astronaut, scientist, judge, medical specialist, mayor and an engineer.

South Africa is a growing economy competing with other markets in the world. Our products need people like you to market them internationally. You are now going to enter a world of ideas. Anything that is successful starts with an idea. It is important that you do not hide your ideas. Share them with people that can help you live your dreams. Who knows? Perhaps your idea can solve people's problems. You can create solutions to many challenges in life. Truly that is how you can get into business.

You must knock on doors until your knuckles bleed.
Doors will slam in your face. You must pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and knock again. It’s the only way to achieve your goals in life."

When you leave this place next year remember that the world is your oyster. The world is ready for you. Go out there and shine and make your contribution. Stand up and be counted as a leader, community builder or nation builder and a shinning star.

Lets all obey our parents, and educators.Your parents are a source of inspiration to you. Let their sacrifices inspire you. A saying we’ve all heard before, but few of us have actually given it any thought. Living each day like it’s your last:

- Forces you to think about your priorities.
- It forces you to quit the things that waste your time and energy and to concentrate on the most important things and people in your life.
- If you live that way you make better choices, you treasure each moment and suck the life out of every hour.
- It removes the clutter and garbage that so often chokes our lives.

Living each day like it’s your last is not about living in gloom and fear of death. Rather it is about:

- Grabbing every opportunity.
- Not procrastinating.
- Doing today what you could put off till tomorrow.
- Reaching out to your dreams today.
- Not letting another moment pass you by.
- Living life to the full.

It’s living your life so that when your time comes to go, someone will care and someone will say their life is different and their life is better…because YOU were there.

My message today is titled Life is hard” and it’s about how to live a great life despite the fact that life is difficult.

Everybody wants to be happy in life. We all want to live a perfect life. We want that great job or a successful business. We want to be married to Mr. Right or Mrs Perfect. We want to have great kids. We want to have friends that stick by us come rain or shine. We want to be able to have all the material things life has to offer and have all our problems just disappear.

Everybody wishes for good life. It may be at different levels. One person may define a good life one way and another may describe it another way. For one person a good life may be just having three meals a day and a roof over their head. For another it may be having a huge mansion and a couple of million dollars in the bank.

There are different levels and meanings to what a good life is. But whatever you definition of it, there is perhaps one thing that you may have in common with many other people. You might want that good life stress free. You would like to have it without having to work so hard or struggle so much for it. That is a normal human expectation. Nobody likes to struggle through life.

Unfortunately, that is also what may be stopping you from having that great life. The thought of all that work, all that planning, overcoming hurdles and resistance is enough to make a lot of people give up before they even start. It can all seem too overwhelming, and for many it all just doesn’t seem be worth it. It’s like being drained of energy just at the thought of running a marathon. Before you are even at the starting line the thought of all that running just scares you and tires you so much mentally you just decide not to go for it. It’s just too hard.

Vacation School Programme

Vacation school programme is dedicated to helping students from BelaBela townships that are caught in the “eye of the storm” after the schools received very low grade 12 pass rates. Intensive tutoring programme will be started during schools holidays, which will feature among others tutoring of key subjects, motivational speakers, sessions aimed at assessing study skills and interactive rhythm workshops. A pool of top-notch tutors will be recruited on voluntary basis. Combined lecturing, tutoring and test preparation for all townships school will be run in key subjects including maths, life sciences, accounting, economics, english, physical sciences(physics and chemistry).

Vision

Our vision is to succeed in reversing the chronic underperformance of our township schools

MISSION

The mission of BelaBela Education Advocacy Group (BBEAG) is to ensure all students acquire the knowledge, skills and values necessary to live rich and fulfilling lives as responsible, productive and enlightened members of a democratic society.