This month’s Lead SA Youth Hero award went to Tyedon Toweel-Moore, a Grade 6 pupil at Trinityhouse Prep School.
Tyedon and his mom Samantha are involved in a youth upliftment programme called ‘Growing Champions’ and they work to help children break the cycle of crime, violence, poverty and abuse.
Tyedon personally assisted a young man aged 26, to ‘fight the good fight’. He gave up his bed for three months to help this man, a ‘Tik addict’ with a criminal record, because he believed that he is a good man with a broken soul.
Tyedon is doing film making and is a very talented musician. He took it upon himself to create a music video to the Script’s song, Superhero, which tells the story of how these young men fight to become healthy contributors to society. The video can be seen by typing in ‘Growing champions’ on Youtube.
“This video was shown to the Script when they visited SA last month and they signed six ‘I support Growing Champions’ T-shirts,” said Samantha.
Tyedon endured the horror of violence, people doing drugs in the open, gambling and being physically abusive. He was brought to tears by the depth of poverty that these children endure when he walked into their fly-infested burned-out homes. He went through trauma work with his mom to deal with all he experienced to make this possible. He wanted to help these children realise they are Superheroes.
This led to three young men between the ages of 16–18 admitting they are addicts and going into rehabilitation – one of whom has already completed the programme and is moving on with his life in a positive manner.
