HEIDI HOLLAND

"They are perhaps in greatest danger of developing hardened hearts, a handicap that may for a time pass as passivity."

Many South Africans give generously of their time and resources to help the poor. But I am often struck by the number of foreigners who go out of their way to assist destitute people, especially children, while residing here ever so briefly en route to their longer-term lives elsewhere.

An Englishman, Gavin Weale, who won the UK Young Publisher of the Year award in 2010, is currently setting up a media channel called Live Magazine in the townships of Cape Town. Funded by the Shuttleworth Foundation, he aims to engage and inspire disadvantaged youth by giving unemployed youngsters ownership of their own social enterprise. The magazine is created for young people by young people, giving them not only a voice but also opportunities through training, mentoring and experience in the working environment.

Weale hired a research agency to collect information from the kids, who in the main felt depressed, angry and worthless. After spending an intense 24 hours with the researchers, he said he was overwhelmed by the thought of the social consequences of 5 million young South Africans feeling disempowered and doing nothing – a word that cropped up constantly in answer to the question of what they did all day. "What is the emotional impact of spending years doing nothing?" he asked himself.

Although these disempowered and in many cases unloved children don't all grow up to take heroin or lead lives of crime, they are perhaps in greatest danger of developing hardened hearts, a handicap that may for a time pass for passivity but is in truth the worst tragedy imaginable. Professor Jonathan Jansen, champion of South African youth, believes that the current generation of unemployed and often unemployable young people is going to be "looking for a culprit". He recently wrote an open letter to the country's kids, following riots in central Johannesburg in which some students still had school bags strapped to their backs. Urging youths to achieve qualifications in order to go forward constructively in life, he said of those involved in the street violence: "I guarantee there are school dropouts among them, and learners who are struggling to pass their grades…Whatever you do, study hard and pass well…so that there are options available to you through university education and in the job market; and so that you are equipped to make a difference as a competent human being in a broken country."

Of countless kind responses to the plight of the poor from foreigners, I can reel off dozens from my own encounters. A Dutch guy I know spent a small fortune helping one inspiring young township entrepreneur to set up cycle tours, and she is now doing brilliantly. Another Dutch couple, both working for a living themselves, rise daily before dawn to prepare and deliver breakfasts, lunches and suppers to Aids orphans who live in a row of shacks in Alex.

A German businessman has bought houses all over Johannesburg, setting them up as what he calls hotels of hope for abandoned children. New York actress Andrea Harris, who came here with her fiancé from a dazzling career at the Royal Shakespeare Company in London, joins local theatre celebrity Dorothy Ann Gould in various townships at weekends to teach Macbeth and Measure for Measure to initially bored kids who visibly gain perspective and ambition.

An American, Brian McCotter, and two of his US colleagues - based briefly in Johannesburg for the National Democratic Institute (NDI) - are still supporting two local children years later, their parents having died within months of each other. Zakhe Zondo, who also worked for NDI, was shot dead breaking up a scuffle outside a shabeen in Alex, where the three Americans used to socialize with the Zondo family. Zakhe's wife, Pamela, died soon afterwards of a random brain aneurism. Their orphaned kids are doing remarkably well, secure in the knowledge that they will be helped through their tertiary education by their dad's foreign friends.

But my favourite story in the soft hearts genre features a boy called Moses. Abandoned at the age of four or five, he lived on a vast rubbish dump in Soweto until being spotted there by animal-lover, Cora Bailey. Trailing behind Moses were the 23 dogs he had rescued from cruel situations and fed healthily from food he scrounged for them. All were carefully groomed by the boy who had suffered such deprivation himself yet still had love for dogs in distress.

Bailey arranged for Moses to go to school and live at an animal clinic called CLAW with her staff. He was able to keep six of his dogs, the rest going to good homes. He spends most of his time at the Bailey home with Cora's grandchild and another of the foster children she has picked up while responding to the needs of neglected animals in South African townships.

Moses, now a teenager, will almost certainly pursue a career in animal welfare. How fortunate he was to be found amid the rubbish by a generous woman, though he clearly wasn't going to succumb to a hardened heart anyway.

You hear so many stories of ostensibly hopeless youngsters making good once given a chance. The best I've come across lately is of Siyabulela Xuza, son of an impoverished single mother, who did well at school, got a scholarship to St John's College, designed a rocket in the school's lab that won numerous awards, had a main-belt asteroid (a star) named after him by NASA, is now studying engineering at Harvard, and flew from the US a few months ago to meet Madiba alongside Michelle Obama.

A recent survey reckoned that one in three resident foreigners enters into an economically supportive relationship or project with poor South Africans. If that ratio applied to our own well-heeled population, what a difference we could make to the hardening of hearts and our collective South African future.

Heidi Holland is the author of several books, including the internationally-acclaimed Dinner With Mugabe.