Help Jamiel Get a Job!

This is Jamiel.

I first met Jamiel in 2015, asking me for money. Yet what differentiated him from all the others was his personality. He saw me almost every day, but he did not ask for money everyday. Instead, as we started talking we became friends.

Through the months I learned what happened in his life. After his father died, his stepmother kicked him out of the family. He was forced to live in the streets or at friends houses in the neighbourhoods. After his family was (justly) shamed for weeks for doing doing this, they bought him a bus ticket so he can get away from the neighbourhood - his own stepmother bought him a bus ticket to leave.

Once or twice I bought a few things for him. What did he want? Expensive marinated, cooked chicken? R200 cash for drugs? No. Each time he had very specific objects in mind: deodorant, washing powder, a basic brown bread, milk and peanut butter. His aim is to keep himself respectful and clean enough to get a job.

With some of the money he made through other people's good will, he enrolled in a computer learning class, hoping that this meager qualification will get him a job.

The hope of this charity is to give him enough money each month to buy these necessary supplies and hopefully support him enough to get a job.

I will not act as though I know him completely - I do not. Perhaps he is partly responsible for the state he is in. Perhaps not. Yet what I know is that he has a good heart and that I have not had as deep conversations about life, people and God with anybody as much as I have had with him.

He is not aware of this campaign. At the moment of writing he is probably trying to sleep outside in the cold city streets.