While I was scrolling through Twitter I ran into a picture whose context didn’t immediately jump at me aside from thinking, well, that’s an interesting image.

Back in the day, when we wrote our last school exams we would go around signing farewell notes on classmates and friends uniforms…. Looking back I wish I had left a legacy than just ink stains and scribblings of I was here… Maybe that’s why I blog, graffiti with punctuation; to leave a mark in the world, that I was here.
Matric students in South Africa now have a tradition of their own for Matric, on finishing their last Matric Exam, they leave their shoes behind. The shoes are collected and given to those in need.

Fish Hoek High in Capetown has been practising this tradition since 2008 and in 2016, Randfontein High School on the West Rand also adopted this donation tradition, with some former students matching the old shoes donated with news shoes.

According to the RHS English teacher and head of the matric grade, Jason Fisher who had seen and done the practise in his Matric year and had encouraged pupils to take part, “Inside the shoes we put messages in the shape of footprints which read, ‘You will never know how tough matric is, until you have walked in their shoes. We are praying for your success’.”
The tradition lives on…
The world maybe going crazy but its stories like these that remind me we can do better… and that makes this the best story I have read all year #BOTY2021

~B



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