Adolescents in the South African context: The roles of the church, spirituality and mentorship programmes in promoting motivation to overcome disadvantage

Abstract

In the South African context, communities are considered disadvantaged if they are excessively burdened with poverty, gangs, violence, crime, bad role models and unbecoming stereotypical norms. Thus, the disadvantage is, in essence, multifactorial, and has deleterious effects on society as a whole and particularly adolescents. Interventions mitigating the negative impact of multifactorial disadvantage on adolescents should be practical, relatively easy to implement and affordable. In this review, we discuss previously published research in this niche to argue that church/spirituality; services of non-governmental/non-profit organisations and mentorship programmes should be a focal point of social development strategies. We propose an implementation model and contend that the collaborative action of church/spirituality, services of non-governmental/non-profit organisations and mentorship programmes in national social development strategies could be beneficial to disadvantaged adolescents.

Key Terms: adolescent; disadvantage; interventions; church; mentorship; non-governmental organisations (NGO); non-profit organisations (NPO; South Africa