Young girls in Gatang Secondary School were entertained by Innocent Sadiki and Millicent Mashile who gave them tips on feeling and looking beautiful.Picture: Thobile Mathonsi/African News Agency (ANA)
Pretoria - Mamelodi’s favourite twins hoped to inspire young girls to be driven and have confidence in their beauty by partnering with hair product brand AfroBotanics and Girl Boss to style young learners’ hair.
A total of 50 girls from various schools in Mamelodi were invited to Gatang Secondary School before schools closed to get glammed up and styled by Skeem Saam actress Innocent Sadiki and her twin sister Millicent Mashile, who themed the event “My own kind of beautiful”.
Mashile said they were trying to teach girls that beauty was confidence, and they wanted to do that by making them not only look pretty, but feel pretty as well.
“The main idea is to inspire, because we are from Mamelodi and it would be pointless for us to forget where we came from. We want to show them that if it was possible for us to make it, then they too can make it,” she said.
The school identified 50 of the most disadvantaged learners to benefit from this initiative and be offered a chance to feel special and supported, despite the difficulties they face.
Sadiki said they knew exactly where the learners came from because they were raised by their grandmother in the area after they lost their mother at the age of 4.
She said it was important to reassure learners that their dreams were valid, and no matter the circumstances around them, they could prosper.
“This will continue because we believe that we need to keep coming back and check on their progress, because having that support system is important. They deserve to feel beautiful and next time it will be even more girls that will get this kind of experience,” Sadiki said
Gatang Secondary life orientation teacher Carol Skhosana said they spent a lot of the time with the learners and could easily see when they had problems at home.
She said some of them opened up to them and what the learners went through was heartbreaking, so having that kind of event would really help give them the confidence they needed.
Founder of Girl Boss and AfroBotanics, Ntombenhle Khatwane, said she had a child in her teenage years and really wished she had these kinds of spaces when she was younger.
“I wish I had a platform that shared all types of information and challenged me as a woman to live my fullest life. From the age of 5 or 6, girls already know that their future is less than what boys’ can be, so they start to dream less,” she said.
She added that they wanted to talk to the girls about issues they couldn’t talk to their parents about, so they could feel comfortable to be whoever they wanted to be.
“We need to start teaching children the skill of being resilient because they need to realise and know that they are bigger than any situation they might go through,” Khatwane said.
Pretoria News