Help Make Rutendo A Future Doctor

My name is Rutendo Muchipi. I am a 20 year old girl living in Bela Bela, Limpopo. I am originally from Zimbabwe and I moved to South Africa in 2012. I am an older sister to six siblings, raised by a single mother and I have never met my father.

Ever since I was a little girl, my dream has always been to be a doctor👩‍⚕️. Seeing myself in that white coat, with a stethoscope around my neck is the picture I have worked hard for throughout high school. Medicine fascinates me! The amount of things that can go wrong in the human body and what can be done to fix it is astounding and I want to be a part of that, bringing hope and healing to people's lives. I can't imagine doing anything else.

I finished my matric in 2018. I worked hard and passed very well. Due to documents and finances, I was forced to take a gap year. I spent 2019 participating in a Mission Discipleship Training (MDT) with the OM organization. This gave me an opportunity to meet wonderful people from all over the world and to realize that the world is much bigger than I thought. It also allowed me to serve other people during the outreaches we had and to have an insight on the role that we all have to play in the great commission.

Unfortunately, I was unable to apply for university in 2019 for 2020 and that led to another gap year. I didn't want to stay home and do nothing the whole year so I reached out to a local doctor in my community, told her my dream and asked if I could shadow her - she agreed. So from 09 Mar 2020-14 Dec 2020, I volunteered at her surgery. This was such a great experience as it gave me a lot of exposure on what happens in the medical field and it also intensified my desire to one day be a doctor.

Being a foreigner is very difficult. Benefits such as bursaries and scholarships are only for citizens. My mom is a single parent who can only afford to pay rent and put food on the table so University is an impossibility. That is why I'm writing my story here to ask for help from anyone willing and capable.

I have applied to a few Universities, have been accepted to two for BSc as it is another route I can take to get to medicine, though I'm still waiting for other two Universities who will only respond in January. Registration is around Feb-March so getting all the needed funds before then would be awesome!

The funds would help me to cover registration, tuition, accommodation, books, laptop, food, student health insurance... pretty much everything 😬 and as a foreigner I'm obligated to pay everything upfront before being allowed to register.

Getting these funds would change my life💃! It would help me to finally take the first step to reaching my dream. I want to inspire my siblings and others from poor backgrounds that anything is possible and that it's okay to dream big because there is good in this world and that with hard work and a little help from other people those dreams can come true.