“I can do anything”, says Yolanda Mussana, MiWay MiHeart Project bursary holder, who is due to graduate at the end of 2023.
Johannesburg, South Africa (28 April 2022) – Yolanda Mussana is a woman with a mission. She has always dreamed of building a professional career as an entrepreneur and is also determined to try out more than one profession in the course of her life.
“I can do anything… and everything,” she says with the confidence born of solid achievement.
She is currently studying towards a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science degree at Eduvos, a private university in Midrand. When she graduates, she looks forward to entering the job market and getting on with her career.
The signs are good because she is particularly interested in software development and robotics, two of the hottest areas in IT. In today’s mobile-first society and economy, there’s an app literally for everything – and a few things you hadn’t thought about. Organisations in both the public and private sectors are under constant pressure to develop new apps quickly, to stay ahead of competitors and meet the growing expectations of consumers and citizens. As a result, software developers are in great demand.
Yolanda’s belief in herself is paradoxically the result of a childhood which had its chaotic side. Sadly, she witnessed firsthand the scourge of domestic violence that affects so many South Africans.
“I felt powerless, but the impact wasn’t negative in the end – it made me determined to have control over my own life,” she says firmly.
That determination, and self-belief, has inspired her and bred in her the belief that nothing is beyond her reach.
She attended Maphuta High School in Tembisa. In Grade 12, she was one of the top-10 students in the school, and the principal encouraged the group of high performers to join the MiWay MiHeart Project mentorship programme, Leaders in the Making. As luck would have it, she was accepted. Through Leaders in the Making, she qualified for a MiHeart Project bursary, which covers all tertiary educational expenses, including a laptop, data, tuition fees and books.
“The MiHeart Project recognises learners like me, with a 65%+ pass mark, and I can tell you, the mentorship really helped me to push myself harder. The Leaders in the Making programme helped build my self-confidence and self-esteem. If you don’t believe in yourself, it’s really hard to apply yourself to your schoolwork,” she explains.
Like all students in 2020 and 2021, the lockdowns prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic turned all her expectations of the university experience upside down. Shifting to online learning was challenging at first, she says—she finds it hard to study on her own and, like many of her peers, home offered no dedicated study environment.
She made it work through self-discipline, learning to manage her time carefully and cultivating the ability to focus on her work despite all the disruptions.
“Not having access to sufficient data was a big challenge, and so was accessing specific hardware I needed for coding and robotics. In both cases, MiWay gave me the assistance I needed. It makes such a big difference when companies care about the individual needs of the students they support. For me, it means I’m not ‘just a number’; I’m a person facing real challenges in pursuing my dreams.”
In-person teaching has at last resumed – something that’s hugely positive in Yolanda’s estimation. “It’s a much richer experience because we now have the opportunity to interreact with, and learn from, other students,” she says. “Both work and social life are much more rewarding!”
All About MiHeart
The Leaders in the Making programme is part of the overall MiHeart Project programme, MiWay’s corporate social investment initiative. Over the course of the last few years MiWay has made strides in refining its corporate social investment to ensure it delivers long-term sustainable and measurable social impact.
MiHeart supports schools in Lenasia, Soweto and Tembisa, which have benefitted from donations of computer labs, books, and groceries. MiWay has also contributed to soup kitchens to provide food for pupils, and refurbished school libraries and repaired infrastructure.
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