My name is Muneer Doman from Bonteheuwel, A community on the Cape Flats.
Starting my journey with the Grow Leadership Academy I was very anxious as to what I would be doing. I was a very introverted person who could never speak out in big groups of people but being on this wonderful journey I have overcome my fear of speaking in bigger groups and I’m more confident in any task that I face.
At the beginning of GLA I always knew that I would want to do something within coding but I was unsure if the program would be offering that, I enquired about this and my Tribe Lead said there would be a course in coding in GLA and this made me very excited as I would finally be doing something that I am really passionate about since a young age but before starting on my coding journey I would first need to prove myself via a systemic test to check if this is really my passion but I passed the test and to me this made me more confident in my abilities to handle pressure and come out stronger at the end of the day.
I had the wonderful opportunity to help facilitate a youth boot camp that was hosted at Rlabs in the school holidays, the boot camp taught the kids about animation but did it in a way that was easily understood by the kids. This was quite a unique experience for myself as I have never been a facilitator but with saying that I enjoyed it, this has made me grow more in my skills and made me more self-aware of what I can do if I just apply myself fully to something I may be doing.
During this journey I learned more about myself, my strengths and weaknesses and how I can deal with pressure, I’ve had many sessions on entrepreneurship and I found this helpful as I would love to start my own business in the future, the skills I acquired has helped me to grow as a person to be better not only for myself but for people in struggling communities that need help and I feel that I have a lot to offer for those communities. In my honest opinion RLabs has really empowered me to believe more in my abilities and remove the stigma of if you come out of area of gangsterism you won’t be anything more than a statistic but I chose a different path and through RLabs they have tapped more into the person that I want to become and not focusing on the area I come from and not many people or even companies will do that.
I would just like to thank everyone at RLabs and the Grow Leadership Academy that has taught me more about myself and aided me in reaching for my goals, this is quite a unique experience and I would encourage all the youth to apply and take this journey of self-discovery and personal growth.
