When Savannah Marney was offered a place at law school three years ago, she had no idea how to pay for it. Then Jimmy Nevis arrived on her doorstep.
Today Marney, 20, from Ocean View in Cape Town, is well on her way to obtaining a law degree at the University of the Western Cape, and it's all thanks to a bursary from the singer's Blue Collar Foundation.
Marney was the foundation's first bursary recipient. After handing out two more in the past two years, Nevis chose Youth Day yesterday to announce the start of a year-long campaign to fund the tertiary education of 100 needy but promising students.
He said the day that commemorates the Soweto uprising of 1976 was the perfect occasion to launch his #1to100 campaign with the Geness Foundation.
"It's just incredible when you think about how that sacrifice has paved so many opportunities," he said.
"And yet even though the landscape of education has changed, the struggle for tools and resources and for education is still a major thing. There's still a lot of gaps and I guess we're trying to bridge those gaps."Marney said her parents could not have afforded to fund her studies. "My father was the only person who was working, so when I got accepted to university I accepted the fact that my parents couldn't bear the responsibility of paying my dues."
She applied to the Blue Collar Foundation, and soon Nevis knocked on her door, wanting to interview her. The call telling her she had been chosen changed her life, she said.
"He kind of knows what we're going through, to be from a small community and be local and have a dream," she said.
Nevis, who grew up in Athlone on the Cape Flats and has a sociology degree, said he felt it was important to try to uplift someone like him. "For me to be able to enrich people from my own community is a really special thing, because that's creating transformation in spaces that I know really well."
Helping is in the singer's blood. Nevis's father is a pastor, and the family home was open to those in need. His parents contributed to the school fees of numerous children.
His foundation was named after Blue Collar, a song from his 2014 album, The Masses, inspired by something Nevis's mom used to say to him: "I don't know when, I don't know how, but we have to believe."
Geness Foundation co-founder Sheena Geness said she was proud of the collaboration with Nevis. "We are very enthusiastic about giving young people a passport to a new kind of freedom, one that will empower them forever," she said...