“Your goals are the road maps that guide you and show you what is possible for your life.” – Les Brown

It’s 12: 05 PM on day 2301 of my journey towards independence and I managed to  pray, read     Revelation 21:5 and work on my  25 Smiles Campaign    –raised $9 625.04 only  $2 875.96 more to raise to reach my second goal of raising $12 500 for Smile Train before Jan 10 2017 (SO SO SO GRATEFUL to everyone who has supported this campaign so far ).

Today is the first day of the year and as per usual I’ve written down my 2017 Goals which I am sharing because I know that once I tell people I plan to do something I generally follow through. Take a look:

2017 Goals

1. Continue to be kind, honest and generous [i’m trying]
2. Raise at least $250 more for my 25 Smiles Campaign before it ends 9 days from today (January 10, 2017)  [final total raised $10 317.04]
3. Publish my book Defying the odds: Where there’s a wheel, there’s a way [editing is almost done]
4. Keep in touch with my aunties, uncles and grandmother [I did this month (June) – spoke to my gran]
5. Call at least one person a month just to hi or thank you [I did this month (June) – called two people
6. Read 10 + books [read 4 book so far]
7. Donate to or raise money for Miss Earth South Africa – it’s a leadership programme that empowers young South African women to combat climate change (they put in food gardens in schools and communities, organize  beach clean-ups, do talks in schools and collect stationary for school kids….. truly phenomenal work)
8. Donate to or raise money for Jumping Kids – a South African NPO that provides prosthetics to disadvantaged kids across the country
9. Donate to or raise money for the Sunshine Children’s Home – a children’s home in my town doing phenomenal work (I went there last year and I was so touched to see how well taken care of the kids were – the adults there are family to those kids they do everything possible to make sure the kids have everything they need)
10. Donate to the Panda Crew – the Panda Crew are basically a group of friends who go around doing good in their spare time (love my Panda brothers they are everything that’s good and right about our world)
11. Go paragliding in Cape Town (people are going to think I’m crazy but I’ve ziplined (if  I can get my parents, my physiotherapist and a paragliding company to go along with it) I know I can paraglide (in tandem with a skilled pilot)) (NOBODY can tell me I can’t do something I KNOW I can do I BELIEVE in my own unlimited human potential) [Update : We made the booking to go paragliding on April 8, 2017 -health and weather permitting on the day I will paraglIde with  Fly Cape Town Paragliding on April 8, 2017]
12. Try painting
13. Meet Ella Constantinides-Leite
14. Meet Brent Lindeque
15. Meet Kerri Stein
16. Meet Sebastian Schütte  and the Panda Crew
17. Meet Yusuf Abramjee
18. Meet Phuti Mahanyele
19. Diarize at least one good moment of every day [doing it]
20. Learn a new word every day [doing it]
21. Learn Sesotho [learned most of the vocabulary and recorded the whole thing not just have to practice]
22. Go to Paris, Rome, Athens and London

Updates were made on June 27, 2017