Good Morning Angels New Year’s Edition: Chene’s tuition fees covered for her first year

BACKGROUND: Chene du Plooy from Centurion has a burning desire to study B.Com Financial Sciences. She wrote matric in 2019 and hoped to do a gap-year to earn some money in 2020, but the COVID -19 pandemic put the brakes on her plans. Regardless, she registered for her first year in 2021, not knowing how she will pay her tuition fees. Chene has been in foster care with her biological aunt and her husband, since she was a baby.

Chene says she used to be ashamed to see her biological parents begging in the street for drug money, but she has made peace with it. She decided to be the master of her own future, by becoming the first graduate in her family. She is driven to study a B.Com to enable her to help people plan their financial futures, as she plans to do for herself. Now, Chene just needs to secure her first year study fees, which she sees as the final obstacle to and her golden opportunity.

REQUEST FOR: Chene du Plooy  

ANGEL:  Corné Strydom representing Sabat Batteries, our Good Morning Angels New Year’s Edition Bursary Sponsors  

SPONSORING: From their Bursary Fund, Sabat Batteries will sponsor Chene’s first year tuition fees of R46,906 to study B. Com Financial Sciences at the University of Pretoria!

ORIGINAL REQUEST:

My name is Chene Du Plooy, I am turning twenty in August. 

I am a hardworking person, and I am driven towards making a success out of myself. Once I set my mind to something, I achieve my goals. 

I was raised in foster care my entire life, my biological aunt and her husband took me under their wings. 

They raised me as their own and have always been a pillar of support. 

My adoptive parents are both pensioners over the age of 65 and they still have to work to provide financially. 

The little money they get is hardly enough to keep us afloat, we struggle financially. 

I am set to start studying Bcom financial sciences at the University of Pretoria in March 2021, but the harsh reality is that my family doesn’t have the means to pay for me. Student loans are not an option, because of my parents’ age. 

I will be a first-generation student if I go to university, the thought of that makes me immensely proud. 

Both my biological parents never finished school, and they battle drug addiction to this day. They are homeless and beg on street corners of Pretoria, in the past I have been ashamed to admit that is who my parents are. 

Especially the numerous times we’ve driven past them on street corners, begging for money to feed their addiction. It serves as a great motivator for me to work hard to become a success, to break the vicious cycles that drug addiction and poverty create. 

My family’s dire financial situation only cemented my passion for what I wanted to study when I grew up. 

I want to study finances, because I have a yearning to be able to help others that don’t know how to spend and invest their money wisely. 

My end goal with my studies is to have the knowledge to help people to manage their money to grow financially and become independent. 

I firmly believe that you don’t need to have money to be able to spend and save wisely, a little financial advice is all it takes. 

I am very passionate about learning to manage money and gain knowledge that will help those around me that don’t have those skills. 

This bursary would mean the world to me, it will make my lifelong dream of studying a reality. 

Thank you for this golden opportunity that helps students to live out their dreams and for considering me. 

Chene Du Plooy

Image credit: Supplied