Mic check: strengthening democracy through dialogue

Miyela seeks to make information, ideas, books, discussions, debates, education something everyone can get.  We need to help young people understand that education can help them not only out of poverty but open the world to them.  It is crucial that South Africa capture the minds of young people because this is the only way they can be free to dream and create a new kind of world.  Miyela seeks to make information and knowledge part of everyday; something not to be feared.

Miyela will host six week seminars on given topics and subjects in an everyday kind of way.  We will take what may be complex topics and themes from art and philosophy to science to tradition and family in a way that anyone can understand.  These seminars provide a space for graduates and practitioners in different fields to talk to heir work in an informal way that anyone can understand and develop their own opinions.  We also provide a space for people with knowledge and experience but have little formal training to teach what they know.  Each six weeks will be based on a given theme and invited guests will tackle it from a range of angles sparking discussion and debate.  The aim is to make information and learning fun, real and speak to contexts that people find themselves in.

The seminars are part of a strategy to by Miyela to develop young writers and thinkers who may contribute their ways of thinking and seeing the world to Miyela the journal.  South Africa needs to develop thinkers who can lead; not only politically but in helping Africa find solutions to our current social challenges.  The journal sees it’s self as a platform for developing young minds in a context that is young and fresh.  The seminars will be the fertile ground on which the ideas that will flower the journal and South Africa’s intellectual capacity will be grown.