Dr Thato Mosehle, the first runner up at last year’s Miss South Africa pageant, aims to use her position to inspire young women by launching a mentorship programme. The programme was launched yesterday, Tuesday 6 April when Mosehle celebrated her 26th birthday, in Sandton Johannesburg.
“I am passionate about women uplifting other women especially, although not exclusively, in education. The mentorship programme will be run in partnership with Entsika Foundation. Mosehle aims to use her time and experience as a medical doctor to inspire young women to pursue their goals in education and various careers while practising self-love, which she defines as holistic wellness of being intentional about nurturing the body, mind, and soul. I aspire to own my own school one day and this is a small but important step towards that,” she said.
To launch the programme, Mosehle hosted twelve young women, six medical students and their friends for a day. The lucky dozen slept over at a five-star hotel in Sandton and participated in a jam-packed day that included morning exercises, a shopping spree, lunch, a spa and make over treatment and dinner.
“I want the girls to really view me as a sister just like them who had breakthroughs through education. I want to become their long-term mentor to show them that it is possible to achieve your goals while having your feet firmly on the ground,” Mosehle continued.
For Mosehle this was more than a night of fun.
“I want them to be hopeful of the lives they can live after varsity. To help them overcome inferiority complex in an environment that constantly suggests that they do not belong, to expand and explore their potential in terms of what comes after graduating,” she concluded.
Mosehle hails from Stilfontein in the North West but was based at Kleksdorp as a medical intern at the Tshepong Hospital when she entered Miss SA. She obtained her medicine degree from the University of the Free State in 2018 and aspires to be an anesthesiologist.
Mosehle spent the past year working on the frontlines of South Africa’s battle against Covid 19. She said Covid 19 brought about global solidarity in a way we had never witnessed as countries supported each other, or people encouraged each other, through the pandemic and its devastating loss of lives.
Mosehle points to her mother, Lesego Mosehle, who is a policewoman as her role model. She also mentions global media icon Oprah Winfrey, who also owns the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa. Her father is an operational director at a security company while her brother is a business economics student at North-West University.
She hopes the night spent with the girls has been impactful and that great things will come out from this group of young women.
