Episode 5 - From Gangs to Gigabytes: Empowering Africa's Youth with Marlon Parker

Marlon Parker started Rlabs in a borrowed computer lab with 14 former gang members. Now, the organization has equipped thousands of people with tech skills that lead to jobs and social transformation. Marlon joins the show to talk about the role innovation plays in empowering Africa’s next generation and how he aims to make hope contagious in all he does. 

Episode Transcript

Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back. We are here with the Faith Driven Entrepreneur Africa podcast and Ndidi. How are you?

Ndidi Nwuneli: We're doing great. I'm excited about our interview today.

Henry Kaestner: I am too. I am, too. And I'll tell you that Africa has been on my mind a lot recently since we started with some incredible podcast interviews on Faith Driven Entrepreneur Africa. In fact, I was at a gathering in San Francisco. I had the honor of doing an event with Andy Crouch in front of a whole large group of faith driven entrepreneurs. And the question came up about where am I feeling blessing in my life recently? And it was a great joy to share with the audience that over the course of the last six months that I have been really encouraged in my faith by the work that I've seen God do in Africa, and in particular the work that we get a chance to do on this podcast. And that's not to say that I don't love the work that we're doing in other places in the world, because I do. And yet nonetheless, the stories that are coming out of Africa, as indeed you've encouraged us all to focus on, is, which is just re exploring the narrative of Africa and what God is doing on the continent of Africa. The strength of the stories and the scale and the scope and the seriousness of the faith and the knowledge of God and the desire to honor Him in the marketplace has been a great encouragement to me. And ultimately everything we do at Faith Driven comes back to this one truth. We want people to understand the living God, commune with the living God more to know how much God loves them. And with that knowledge, then to take that into their families and their church communities and of course, the marketplace. And we've got a great story today about such a case with Marlon Parker. Marlon, thank you very much for joining.

Marlon Parker: It's amazing to be. And thank you so much, Ndidi and Henry, for having me today.

Henry Kaestner: So we like to start off every show and there's so much to talk about with youth and entrepreneurship and your journey. But we do want to start with an autobiographical fly over who is Marlon Parker? Where do you come from? Tell us a bit about how you came to faith in the beginning of your story, please.

Marlon Parker: So my name is Marlon Parker from a place called Cape Town in South Africa. But more specifically, I was born in a community called the Cape Flats, where there's a lot of social and economic challenges. You know, and my journey itself, and I'll maybe give you a little bit of a backstory, actually started with a young teenage girl who was in love. And as you fell in love at the same time, she was the youngest of four children. And being the youngest of four children and older siblings all dropped out of school. The entire family's hope was that she was going to complete school and that she was going to be the one that was going to change the fortunes of the family. She fell in love and then she also fell pregnant. And it was at that moment in time where she had to make a very big decision because what she thought was the love of her life told her that she either has to get rid of the child and then you will stay, or if she keeps the child in, you would leave. And fortunately for me, my mother decided to keep the child. And that was really my introduction into the world where a young girl, she was out of high school, willing to give up all the dreams and aspirations to give hope to that which she was carrying. You know, and I love telling people that I will six and a half months in my mother's womb when I decided to come out, because I didn't want you to change her mind. You know what? If you change the mind. So I was born prematurely and everybody told her that she made a big mistake. This baby, they would rather believe that she should rather abort the child. But somehow this young girl willing to sacrifice the dreams and aspirations and thank God for this, she opted to give hope to that which she was getting. Even the doctors told her this child is going to have learning disabilities, is not going to grow properly. All the reasons why should let go of this child? And that was my introduction to the world. I grew up with a single parent home on the Cape Flats during a time which was very difficult in South Africa, apartheid, and which I believe was urban poor. We literally eventually, as a family of about eight people, lived off about 30 USD a month, which is definitely not much. It's very tough, but through it all, God has always been faithful and how I got to know him, I must be honest. No one in my family was saved other than my. My grandmother was a praying grandmother and I would eventually go to school and everything would be fine. And it was in my last year of high school. I would never forget this. I even remember the date, the 23rd of January, 1995. Right. And that particular date was going to be my last day on this earth. So growing up poor and because I felt I was a burden to the family, I felt that, you know, even though I'm at school and I'm. About to complete high school. There was no money for me to go and study. There was nothing else for me to go and do. Interestingly, I used to love going to church. Church for me was an escape. And also the church was literally just across the road. So I had no other choice but to go. My grandmother would kind of force us to go to church, you know. But through it all, I remember that particular night I already prepped my note of why I'm leaving because I was going to take my own life. And I remember clearly that night I decided I'm going to go to the youth prayer meeting, which normally I would disrupt, I would be very disruptive. I wouldn't really go. I would just kind of go to be disruptive, not because of anything happening day. And that night when the prayer meeting came to a close, because I was asking a lot of questions, I was just being on another another trip really. But that night, as everybody started to leave this little room where we would normally meet, I couldn't move. I found myself stuck there. I literally couldn't move. And we would only sit on the floor and I was sitting in the corner and in my mind, I'm trying to call out to someone to come and help me. And that is what I thought I'm going to say. But the words that came out of my mouth was, Jesus, I need you. And I hear myself saying it and I'm like, okay, that's not what I want to say. And the more I try to get someone's attention to help me up because I was stuck, I literally couldn't move. I kept on crying out to Jesus and nobody preached to me. I was literally in that moment where God said, Enough is enough, my child. I've seen you suffering. And for me, my biggest pain was I grew up without a father. I was fatherless and I thought I wasn't good enough. I was rejected. And in that moment, that split second God just kind of came and he basically kind of saved me. And and that was how I came to know him as my personal savior. And in that moment, he showed me every single moment in my life. You know, when they say you'll see your life flashing in front of you. At that moment I saw, you know, I just kind of had this visual picture that while my mother was even carrying me in her womb you know, God was whispering and telling her, just keep on persevering, have faith. And throughout my journey, God was constantly there. Even when I was born, I was for four years in hospital. There was everything wrong with me that could have been wrong with me. But God was faithful. So that's how I got to know the Lord as my personal savior really stopped me on the brink of committing suicide and never looked back, you know? So that's my introduction and the story, I think.

Ndidi Nwuneli: Powerful story. What a powerful story, Marlon. You know, there's so much to unpack there because mental health and salvation and the almost like a Damascus experience where God saved you is so powerful. And I would love to come back to it as we jump into your entrepreneurial journey. So you went from desperation and despair to now becoming a celebrated entrepreneur and social innovator in South Africa. Can you just tell us a bit about your innovations and why technology as a way out for communities?

Marlon Parker: Yeah, so I'll tell you from that moment forth, because I think it's very important to paint the picture. So I've never seen a computer in my life. Let's get that straight. This is the the late nineties in South Africa. I've never been exposed to computers nor the internet. I complete school and like most people get saved. You all want to become a preacher? Yes. Everybody wants to go and become a pastor. You know, you want to go and evangelize everything and everyone. And when I completed school, I didn't quite know what I was going to do. And I remember the family needed money. I mean, but we were living with my grandmother's social grant, which was a very minimal amount of money. My mother didn't have a full time job, and there were other siblings and family members that we needed to support. The only thing I could do, I then went and I became a, you know, a shopping cart like a trolley. I was pushing trolleys for tips, and I was doing that for about two years. And my my dream and my aspiration has always been I want a job where I can wear a shirt and a tie? That was the dream, because people that wear shirts and ties, I believe, was very important people. Now, imagine, I just got saved, I've got all this faith and here I'm going and I'm pushing shopping trolleys for tips, that was it. And I remember having meeting someone. Oh, I applied for a job, actually, to work in an office. And when I heard the word office, I thought, brilliant, I'm going to get this job. This is for me. And when I applied the person, I got shortlisted and I was so confident that I was going to get a job wearing a shirt and a tie that I went to buy myself a bright red tie and a white shirt because I wanted people to see me even when I walk in the dark. I really thought I was so confident. I'm sure anybody the listeners that have confidence when you know you're going to get it. And that was me. So much confidence just to find out. And I remember and this was the mistake I made. I then decided and I told the Lord, I said, Lord, you know, I was very confident I was going to get the job because I was shortlisted. I knew the lady doing the interview and I'm just giving this little backstory to how I got into my journey. And I said, Lord, you know, if I don't get this job, then I'm going to go and study something. And I really thought, man, I know I'm going to get this job. And to my surprise, I was told, sorry, we're not going to give you the job. We're going to give it to the other person. And as I left that place, I walked in, I told myself, I'm going to go in study. And I didn't know what I was going to study. And I walked into a lady that was working as a waitress and she says, Marlon, where you going? And I said, No, I'm going to go home. I'm going to go and find something to study. And when she heard that, she said, You know what, Marlon? If you want to study something, you must go and do "it". I'm like, What? No, man, study "it". I'm like, What is "it"? And she says she don't know. She was serving this table and the guys at the table were talking about "it" all the time. And she got so excited she said that's information technology. And I was like, Eh, what? She said no man. They were talking about information technology study "it". And of course, that is IT. And she got so excited that I got excited, you know, and after a while, I don't know why I'm doing it. And I just went and I said, okay, I'm going to do it. And that's how I ended up in the world of technology by someone that eavesdropped the conversation while she was waitressing. And that was my only career guidance. So I ended up applying at the university, and this is a very important part of the story. Didn't know what I was going to do. They asked me, What do you want to major in? And I thought, Major in major. And because I saw there was an option called programing. And I said, you know, I've done a lot of programs. I remember being at youth and holiday clubs. And at church, there was a lot of programs. And I told them, I said, You know what? I've done 12 years of programing. I want to major in programing. And they were like, Are you sure? Because your results at school don't match up with programing. They didn't talk about computers. Right. They said, okay, they took me down for programing. Very excited. And then they asked me, how many languages do you want to do? I speak two languages and I thought, well, I'm thinking if I could do three languages would be great. And I said, I would love to do three languages, please. So I ended up majoring in a highly technical qualification, which was really around software engineering and programing. And for anybody that knows programing languages, the three languages I had to do was COBOL, C and assembler, which is nasty. I mean, I come from a tough neighborhood, but those languages are tough. And that was my introduction to the world of technology. Ended up going through the university, doing very bad in the first year, managed to turn things around. Thank God for that. And eventually got to a point where I realized that if I really wanted to survive because my family was very close to losing their home, because my grandmother put our house, the little home that she had up as a collateral for a loan for me to go and study. And while I was at the university, I hadn't thought what I saw, that there was an opportunity because there was one subject that I was good at that a lot of other students were bad at, and that was statistics. So I thought, well, why don't I get people to pay me to watch me study and I guarantee that they are going to pass. So I ended up looking at this a clear market opportunity and I got people told them they must pay me something like $2 for a two hour session. Really? And to my surprise, I had so many people applying that I would make about $1,000 for 2 hours of work. And that was kind of like my way to repay my school fees. And then what happened was while I was doing this, the university found out that what I was doing is actually illegal because I can't, to become a qualified tutor. I had to go through the university system and I was doing it on the side, paying the janitor a couple of dollars. You know, at the end of the day to leave the lecture theater open for me and just delay the cleaning or thereof. So they stopped me. But in my third year of study this now while I was part of the university, I have to go out and do an internship. And while I was doing an internship, they called me and they actually said, Marlon, are you the Marlon Parker who did the illegal tutoring? And I said, Yes, it's me, but I apologize. I said, I said, I'm sorry. And they even said, no, you don't understand. They said, you know, what you've done is normally the statistics pass rate is about 40%. But last year when you were doing your illegal activities, the pass rate was over 80% and the only anomaly was your illegal activities. And lo and behold, they eventually offered me and asked me, would I like to become a lecturer. Now, this is while I was an undergrad, right? So what they they indeed they offered me a lecture post. And, you know, on my first day when I had to go into my lecture class to go for the lecture theater, I had the privilege and the honor to actually wear my white shirt and a bright, bright red tie. So I ended up in academia, in technology. So my whole journey of technology came through purely by it was just, God, there's nothing can say that. Someone gave me good career guidance. It was purely just the way God guided me. But while I was on that journey, I realized that the community that I come from, there was a lot of young people who have lost hope. And hope has been a catalyst in my journey all my life. Right, right from the beginning, when my mom gave birth to me through my schooling, through my work career, everything was always about hope. And it was at that moment that I realized God really just told me I needed to make a decision what I want to do. And and this defining moment came when I saw eight year old child. Living in the same street that I grew up in was age of eight, looking for a job, eight years old, looking for a job. And he wanted a job so that he can buy bread for his five year old sister who was hungry and he wanted to buy her shoes so she can go to school. And it was at that moment where, you know, the Holy Spirit spoke to me and God said, you know, I have a choice that I can make. I can either continue with my great career or I can use what I have and decide to leave a legacy and to do something for the kingdom. And that became a moment when I saw this young boy. I'm like, Okay, Lord, what do I do? And the only thing I knew was I knew how to teach technology. And that really became the genesis of how we started our life journey. And I said, Lord, okay, the only thing I'm going to do, I'm just going to train one young person with technology skills. So the old journey purely started off by teaching one young person how to use technology skills. There was no organization, no name. That was the only thing that I wanted to do. But that person must understood what I was doing. They thought, I'm giving free computer classes. So that's how they then started inviting other people in the community. And these were ex-gang members and ex-drug dealers, the first group of people that I had, and that's how they began the journey. We are all of a sudden I ended up having to train community members on how to use the power of the Internet and technology. So that's kind of how the journey story.

Ndidi Nwuneli: Great story and the series of divine interventions. God leading you down the right, that's exactly what he wanted you to be. Just give us a few highlights on what you have been able to accomplish with our lives over the last ten years and more in terms of impact and numbers.

Marlon Parker: Yeah. So our labs, just to kind of paint a picture of what all this I gave the back story of how we got the so we started training people. One person at the end of one year it was 14 people and this was 13 years ago. It started as a little side project. In 2008, 2009, we officially launched it as a nonprofit and then eventually a social enterprise. Since that day, the first day, we've now graduated over one and a half million people.

Henry Kaestner: My goodness.

Marlon Parker: We equipped. Yeah. So what started off as one person 13 years ago, 13 years later, God has taken us over one and a half million people have been affected by some skill level. And the training we do ranges from basic computing, entrepreneurial type training, right through to teaching people Fullstack development, coding on the blockchain, cloud computing, all the fancy buzzwords and the people that we equip and develop are young people and women specifically from underrepresented, marginalized communities. So in South Africa we work across a lot of townships, in the rest of Africa we work in rural areas, rural towns, and that has really been a core focus for us. So that's the one part that we do. We build capacity in people because we innately believe that people have the ability to then use that skill to either start a business or they can find themselves into an employment. And we've supported over 100,000 people with jobs just through that process. The second aspect of what we do is what we once, we realize that thing that we all created in God's image, right, and his likeness, and he's the ultimate creator, we have to be creative. And what we did, we very quickly realize that when people have skill, who based understands the challenges and the problems that they are going through and the people who love the problem. But if we can enable them and equip them with the skill and the ability to use that skill to solve their own challenges, then we might be surprised. So we created what we call an innovation lab that fundamentally what it does, we bring people together and we create an environment that people can create. Today it's known as MVP's. Today we call it user centered design, design thinking. But what they fundamentally do is they create they turn the idea into reality a either a product or service that can drive socio economic impact in the local context. And since we've done that, we've probably launched over 100 technologies through our labs that has impacted around 25 million people directly through these technologies. One example would be, for example, in the first technology we built was offering people access to counseling and support services via their mobile phones. This was now before the likes of WhatsApp and Slack was around. We built an enterprise messaging platform that counselors would use to support people on the other side via the mobile devices. And we had millions of people sharing billions of messages where people were accessing support. And that innovation and technology was built by young people from the townships. And then the other aspect of what we do is really supporting small businesses and entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs and building startups. And we've supported around just over 5000 small businesses and startups over the last 13 years. But that kind of gives you that kind of very high level. It's really around building people, building products and services. And then lastly, advancing that impact through entrepreneurship and venture building.

Henry Kaestner: So I love that and I love the scale behind it and I love the sense behind it. One of the marks of a faith driven entrepreneur, we have these 12 marks, Marlon, the call to create identity in Christ, faithfulness versus lawfulness, excellence, etc. But you seem to really harness this call to create in the people you've worked with. The other thing that I think [...] has mentioned is that a million, a half is a lot of scale. And so you've been able to grow rapidly. But more important than really the concept of technical skills, although that's crazy important in the scale there, again, as incredible as this concept of making hope contagious, something you talk about a lot. And I like that that word contagious. Of all the things you might want to make contagious. Hope would be one. And maybe I'm just thinking through this pandemic mindset of the word contagion and etc., but my goodness, what better thing to scale out there and get people excited about than hope? How do you do that? Tell us more about that.

Marlon Parker: Yeah. So I'm going to give you a secret, so nothing about the Rlabs model. Everything is basically to get from the word the word based. So when we talk about making hope contagious. We took that from Jesus when he gave the great commission. You go out to the ends of the earth, right. And make disciples. And that's our way of making it contagious. And when we look at making hope contagious, just my definition of hope is having a certainty in today and an expectation in tomorrow. And when we talk about making it contagious, it means enable someone to be filled with hope and by someone seeing the hope in that person that will allow someone else to also be encouraged, then also feel that they can also do this. For example, when you see a young person that grew up the way you grew up knowing the same background that you had and you see them being able to do it against all odds, then all of a sudden you start believing that if that person can do it, then I can do it. And the second thing that we do is we enable our people in our communities and we encourage them go and equip someone else, pay it forward, you know, whatever you've learned. Use it to do good. And when people come to our training academies, it's very unusual. There's only two requirements. They don't have to pay. So we don't charge people to come and learn at Rlabs and we make money in other ways. There's two things that they have to do. Firstly, whenever they participate in any of our programs, especially the ones where they are coming, either virtually or they're coming in-person. With some of our facilitators, we ask, Can you please just smile? That's the first thing. Just smile. Even if you know it's been tough. Smile. That's all we ask you to do. The second thing we ask them to do is whatever you've learned. Use it to do something good with it for someone else. That's the only requirement we have. Other than that, absolutely. You can come and learn and experience all these training, all these programs at no cost to you, as long as you keep smiling. And secondly, you share that and move it forward. And that is really been our we've kind of catalyzed this idea of making hope contagious. But also we started opening up a lot of the models and things that we've done and sharing it with other organizations we've replicated in other countries and surely villages around. For us is really how do we advance the kingdom? And the one way of doing that is not holding it back, but really advancing it. And that's why we use the metaphor of of making hope contagious.

Ndidi Nwuneli: I love that Marlon and many of our listeners are getting so inspired. Right? I'm inspired. But what's your sustainability model? It sounds almost too good to be true. Just smile and do something good with it. How do you sustain the great work that you do?

Marlon Parker: Yeah, the fascinating thing about how we do and I mean our business model, we run a social enterprise, which means we got a lot of work that is free for our grassroots communities. These are normally people that grew up the way I grew up who cannot afford education or cannot afford. So we make sure that that's available. But then what we do is we understand that there's certain companies that might need access to talent, which is a big need. And we fortunate, of course, in Africa that we've got the world's largest kind of and growing workforce. It comes to the young people that we have. So, one, we provide access to talent. And secondly, in a lot of the work, we enable people to create and build their own products and services. We were surprised later on, the companies actually don't know how to build products for emerging markets right down from big retailers and manufacturers to financial services, insurance companies, you name it. Everybody's trying to build products and services for these markets. We RLabs have actually got physical infrastructure, physical hubs in these communities. So all of a sudden, we get flooded with people asking us, can we provide innovation as a service? And the nice thing about it is the people that are building and creating these products and services are the very people from the community that now gets paid, and we are able to kind of generate revenue on the back of that. So that's been kind of one of the key catalysts of generating revenue. And in the third part, we invest in a lot of these modernizing entrepreneurs. We bought products that we didn't use and really kind of generate and monetize across South Africa and and other parts of the world. So that's really our current thing. So it's innovation as a service, training as a service, because now we get a lot of big companies asking us, can we reskill? They need to reskill their staff. All of a sudden understanding things like cloud computing and all of those things. So we do a lot of that. And we've got our own technology products that we generate recurring revenue off. And all of that is built by the people that come through our academy programs.

Ndidi Nwuneli: I love how you've been able to see opportunities rope them in and wrap them into your strategy and pivot and your skill is the ability to listen to what the market is telling you, but also what your communities need and mesh those together. That's truly impressive. That's divine intervention. Wisdom from God. Well done. Just so inspirational. But how do you introduce these young people to Christ? And how do you share the message of Christ with these communities and even with the customers that you serve?

Marlon Parker: Yeah, it's such a good question. So, you know, before we started the journey, I was initially 14. I thought about Kingdom. You know, we got into a skewd that we thought it's about church, you know, and we we sometimes confuse church with kingdom in God's kingdom. And interestingly enough, more than 70% of people that come to Rlabs are nonbelievers. Isn't that amazing? You know, so we get a lot of people that are Muslim and atheists. And all we do, we literally just do what Jesus said, you do, you know, love the Lord, your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul all your being and love your neighbor. And just by loving people that has become a catalyst in people. All of a sudden someone can believe that this is what we are doing for their family. You know, you might have a mother that comes and she could be Muslim and she would come and she would say, We're doing this for a child. Or every single place where they went to people shut the doors for them. And here, a door is opened and it's through that expression of Christ and the love of Christ that people would get to know who Christ is. So it's not like we don't kind of, you know, have the traditional church or anything in that sense, but people experience the love of Christ. You know, we go where others are not able to go. And I think that has really been catalytic. So our sharing of our faith comes through the work that we do. And you always find people asking and, you know, who's the people that normally ask us to pray. So we may have workshops and things. It's actually most of it comes from unbelievers and ask us, please, can you please pray where they ask us and and we don't tell them. We don't tell them. Look, we're going to pray. Nothing like that. It comes as a request from their side. So that has been how we've been sharing our faith. And of course, you get the opportunity through connecting with the community at a very deep level because when you open your heart and they have hope and they're filled with hope, you know, and and they have now a livelihood, all of a sudden they invite you into their homes. But it's kind of crazy. We actually had one of our models quickly. We provide training using community spaces as well. So we would use a church hall and we would use the community center or under a tree. Guess what? We even got invited. We were running training at mosques in the community. So all of a sudden the imam, you know, invite us, come to the mosque, can you please come and do training, equip our young people, equip our communities? And that is what's become possible. And that's how we share our faith. We share the love of Christ.

Henry Kaestner: Tell us some stories that are fascinating to hear about the imam. Tell us some stories. If you've got a million people have gone through the program, it's probably difficult to say. Here are my favorites. But walk us through just the interaction that you've had with some of these children. And as you've seen them progress over the course the last 13 years from from being like you, where you think that a language is, you know, it's Afrikaans or it's English, and then not really knowing what programing and coding is and and what it is. Right. But walk us through some of the stories of people that have been impacted by the program.

Marlon Parker: Yeah,I'll share couple quickly, I'll share you story of a young man when he came into one of our spaces, our spaces, think of it this way and Rlabs space is a very vibrant, colorful space. We have a barista, so there's a cafe in the place and people can walk in and they would they come for the cafe and then they realize, Oh, they can actually come and learn and develop things. So we have this young man that comes in is is on the brink of joining a gang. Okay. So he's he's got that kind of demeanor. He walks in and he sees a place. And all of a sudden when you walk in, the first thing that we do in Rlabs is we make sure that people know they found a place where they belong. The thing about belonging is so important, and you were surprised that people were so kind to him. Nobody dressed him in any you know, everybody was happy to see him. And as a young man and his name is Eric, as he came in, he started, you know, getting through some of our training programs. He did a couple of courses. And then one day I actually had the privilege of meeting him. And he speaks to me and he sees Marlon. Now, remember, he dropped out of school many, many years ago. He would have kind of only done one year of high school. And he dropped out and he came back to me and he said, after being with us now for almost a year, he actually wants to go back to school. I said, Wow, that's amazing. And he says. But the problem is he's he's he's got fetal alcohol syndrome, right? So he's got a learning disability. And when he said that, you know, God [...] He is gonna to just tell me that I must tell him that is actually normal. School is not going to be good enough for him because he's extraordinary. And I share that with him. And I said, you know, you can't go back to normal school. You have to go into school. Normal people do the last year of school in 12 months. You should go and do it in three months. I told him and he looked at me and he's like, What [...]? Why don't you go and do school in 12 in that normally 12 months, go in, do it in three months, go and finish your last year. And do everything in three months. And you know what we did? We created an environment where you could come and learn. We got him some tutors and this young man went and he completed school in three months. I mean, I can't even do it. All right. Literally. And what happened was just the fact that people that believed in him, his whole demeanor, change, he didn't join the gang. Secondly, his ability in adopting and really kind of grasping technology was powerful. Today he runs his own little technology company. Right. And this is the power of really just believing in people, you know, leading with love, instilling hope. So that's one story of Eric that against all odds was able to do that. Another quick story is of a young lady, Suzanne. She was living in a what they would call a shack in South Africa, informal structure. She herself has been involved with a very hard, difficult life. And this young girl, when she came to Rlabs, one of the things that we also do, we always have mothers and fathers in our spaces. Sometimes a young person might come for learning, but they just need to be loved by a parent. And she came and she could just really got she came every time because she wanted to connect with a parent. They've never lived in a house before. And what she did. She also went back to school, completed school. And then this young girl, Suzanne, is her name. She was able, against all odds, able to equip herself with skills, start her own business. And she eventually went and bought a house for her family. Now we're talking about a very short space of time, but this is what happens, you know, when heaven collides with what's happening on the earth, amazing things happen. And it was through those kind of examples we've seen over and over again young people that were destitute, young people who had no hope, now being filled with hope. And you know, Suzanne currently runs a feeding program for kids from her old community where she feeds hundreds of children. And this is what she's able to do.

Ndidi Nwuneli: So thank you, Marlon. Your stories are nothing short of miracles. I'm a social innovator, as you know, in Africa as well. And burnout rates are high. This work is difficult. It's challenging. How do you stay motivated, renewed, refreshed, and how do you protect your mental health and the mental health of your team? Because mental health is a very real issue, especially among young people on the continent and across the world.

Marlon Parker: You know, it's such a good question, you know? I mean, for me, it really just God so my relationship with the one who is my source and my strength, that ispriority. So I make a lot of time to spend with God and, you know, be filled with the Holy Spirit. Spend time on the Word. So that for me is a high priority. And that's also why I said a lot of ideas. Inspiration comes from the Word of God and from the Holy Spirit. Nothing is self made. The other thing is having a good support structure. So I have a mentor, someone that I connect with quite frequently that I speak to, and when things are tough, I go in, I speak to the person, you know, make sure that I have a team of people that's constantly praying, you know, alongside me. And I have an amazing wife. Rene That's absolutely amazing. That supports everything that we do. We work together. We both are doing Rlabs together. And then for our young people, how we keep things sane, I think, is really creating an environment that represents and reflects hope. That's what we do. We always prioritize people before stuff. We believe God guarantees people, right? So we prioritize people in everything that we do. We've now experimented with a four and a half day work week, hoping to bring it down to four days for our young people. And it's those kind of little things that we do to ensure that the environment reflects possibilities and reflects what we believe is that experience of God's love for us. So that's what we do for our young people.

Ndidi Nwuneli: Terrific. And, you know, a lot of our listeners have never been to South Africa, don't know much about it. And I would just like to share what do you see as the future 5 to 10 years from now coming from Africa to the world? Right. What do you see as Africa's hopeful future? What are some things that excites you about the context that you work in? And, what do you think we can teach the rest of the world at this time?

Marlon Parker: Such a good question. Firstly, everybody is welcome to come and see me in Cape Town. That open invitation just call me when you are in Cape Town.

Henry Kaestner: A beautiful, beautiful city.

Marlon Parker: Absolutely. And a beautiful city. You know, I think what gets me excited about Africa at the moment is we do have the world's largest youth population. You know, we've got this incredible young generation full of promise, full of potential. And that, for me, is the thing that excites me the most. We're also aware that we can have the world's largest workforce in the next 5 to 10 years. And what an amazing opportunity, I believe, is a God opportunity for us to start harnessing and developing this incredible, incredible talent that this continent has, a continent that has been excluded for many years before this. Right. And what an opportunity for God to allow his kingdom to be manifested, allowing these young people to go in places and do things that had never been done before. Because that and I just firmly believe this is a God moment that God has given us. So that's the thing that excites me and also excites me, because I know that Africa only contributes a small percentage of the global GDP. Right? The global GDP is something like over $80 trillion or something. I can't remember. It's a very small fraction of it. And I think the opportunity is that because of this young, incredible talent that we have in young people, we are most likely going to contribute more to the world's global GDP. That's going to see the transition and the face of the continent change. And that's what really excites me about Africa.

Henry Kaestner: It excites us, too. It really is. And I love the way that you've provided hope for us or for our audience. For a million and a half young people in Africa, it is indeed contagious. As we come to a close, one of the things we'd like to ask Marlon, of all of our guest, is something that you might be hearing from God in his word, maybe today, maybe this past week. But we believe, of course, that God's word is active and alive, and he speaks to us through it. How is he speaking to you?

Marlon Parker: Sure. It's a good question Henry, you know, recently I was just reminded of Psalm 23 again. You know, it's a song that we all know we recited. Some of us thought that at school, get used quite often in funerals, but I was really just reminded about Psalm 23 and the words that the Holy Spirit told me was. Adding confidence in crisis because that's what Form 23 is really about. You know how he is our shepherd. Even when I go through the valley of the shadow of death, he's right there with me. And in the midst of what we currently see all around us, I can have the confidence of knowing that God is with me, that he's there with his power, with his authority. And as I keep on journeying with him, I can have confidence. And you know that Psalm ended, by saying, surely, you know, goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and surely really talks about confidence. And it doesn't matter what I'm going through, it doesn't matter how difficult things might be right now. I can be clear with confidence because my confidence is in Christ. I can say surely, you know, goodness and mercy will follow me. And that's really been something of the last couple of days that I've been meditating on and spending time with, just realizing that I can have confidence in the crises.

Henry Kaestner: Great word, great word, great ministry. Marlon, thank you very much for being on and sharing your story with us.

Marlon Parker: Thank you so much for having me.

Ndidi Nwuneli: Thank you, Marlon. You you're an inspiration. Keep up the good work and we will visit you in Cape Town very soon.

Marlon Parker: Ndidi you are welcome you open invitation. Please do come.