Hungry to Learn

“They told us, ‘Bring plates and spoons!’” Nothabo remembered. “But we wanted to feel it,” she said, still not believing that the meals were real.

For Nothabo, the idea that anyone would want to help her and her family was a foreign concept. So, when her school began to receive assistance from a feeding program provided by the partners of Joyce Meyer Ministries, she was skeptical.

“It was not easy to believe that someone is going to offer you food,” Nothabo explained, thinking back to her school days when food was scarce in her home in Zimbabwe. “Growing up I was brought [up] by a single mother, and there was a severe drought… my mom couldn’t afford everything that we really needed.”

But it was real…and the meals she received made a significant difference. “It’s really changed my life,” she explained. “That motivated me to attend school, and it also improved my academic performance.”

Not only that, but those meals inspired her future. You inspired her to do the same for others. She had always wanted a career that allowed her to work with people, but the meals gave her a new idea.

“I knew that [I was going to do] something that…has to do with advocating and empowering the vulnerable communities—like someone did to me when I was still at school,” she said.

Today Nothabo works as a social worker—giving back to her community, because of the way she was first given the tools she needed to succeed. “I always think it's all God that brought me this far,” she mused. “It was not easy. Even in the Bible it says, ‘with God nothing is impossible,’ so after all, I always thank God for bringing [me] this far.”