Personal message

My daughter really loves South Africa. She is 23 years of age, completer her BSc in Architecture at UP, and decided to take a gap year abroad to see what the world is doing differently from our country to ensure sustainable cities and spaces. She's been living and woking in Long Island since January 2023.

Her experience of the US has been an enlightening one. She found that there are exceptional opportunities for further learning, and a safe environment where she has quickly found strong aliances and  good support networks - local and also quite a number of SA citizens.

During the last 6 months she has indicated a need to study for her masters in New York at the NY School of Interior Design.  She worked diligently on an exceptional portfolio which was submitted on 5 January 2024. She got accepted into the New York SID last week. She is over the moon. And we believe this to be a once in a lifetime opportunity.  

She is a pro-active hard worker who makes things happen, a Believer dedicated to finish what she starts and to not give up, performance driven, and open minded to take on new challenges.

Our next challenge is to find the 70 000+ dollars that will cover all her costs for a year. My husband and I, and family members and close friends, should be able to raise at least the first 30 000 (about R500 000) That leaves us with a deficit of abour R800 000). We really need your help. Study alone will cost in the region of 42 000 dollars. Thereafter we need to look into accommodation and daily stipend. She will also be looking into any kind of internship or fellowship to raise additional funds.


Crumbling infrastructurse and poor maintainence of everything that determine quality of life in South africa, are unfortunately sad realities. She is determined to find sustainable solutions in the sphere of architecture, interior architecture and integration of AI tecnologies to bridge the gap between somehing on the verge of collapse and identifying problems timeously in order to address the issues in a proactive manner. I would love to give her the chance to find out her capabilities to bring change to this world.

SA institutions are working hard to deliver on built environment professinals to market, but SA is not sufficiently addressing the dire infrastucture needs of our quickly backwards sliding country. Not to mention lack of mentoring and employment opportunitie to really learn a professional trade.


South Africa has too much to offer the world to let it go to waste! Please give her a chance to study abroad, to learn a brand new skills set, and bring her skills back to our beautiful country to do her part in creating solutions in green design and sustainable spaces.