Thulani Ngwenya would get up at 4:30 in the morning in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
While some classmates arrived at school by car and others by bicycle, he walked for up to three hours along dark winter roads. He returned home the same way: on foot, hungry, knowing that would be his only meal of the day. He finished secondary school and worked for an entire year, first in construction and then as a teacher’s assistant, just to save the money he needed to apply to university.
What changed his destiny was the Umthombo Foundation, which since 1999 has helped young people from poor rural areas study health-care careers, with scholarships and ongoing tutoring. Ngwenya studied medicine between 2008 and 2012 thanks to that support, and today he is the medical manager of Bethesda Hospital in Ubombo, just 82 kilometers from where he grew up. He could have gone to work in a large city. He chose to stay: “I have always wanted to stay here. I think I will”.
