Berger and Rosenstein, who have spent the last two semesters in South Africa, had a vision to build hope and trust together for the township of Langa, whose population is about 150,000. Along with Jennie Hastings, a student from the University of Colorado, they founded a career and education counseling center for the young students of the township. The idea for Zithembe, which means “to bring hope” in the South African language Xhosa, came to Berger after spending a week getting to know residents in the township of Langa.

“The experience of learning how similar people are to me was completely overwhelming for me,” Berger said. “There was really no huge difference from the people I met that were my age and myself. The basic defining factor between me and the people I met was the color of my skin and the place I was from.”

Berger said he hated the fact that so much opportunity was afforded to him simply because of the circumstances of his birth. He said he felt there was no reason why the people he came in contact with should not have the same opportunities open to them.

“The people I met were so intelligent and had so much potential but just didn’t know how to go about using their talent,” he said. “It killed me to see so much wasted ability.”

Rosenstein said she agreed to pursue Berger’s idea to start Zithembe because she saw that the students in Langa just needed a little guidance to grasp the opportunities that lay in front of them.

“We’d be giving them help that we just completely take for granted at home,” Rosenstein said. “They really just needed very simple and easy things that they never had or never knew about.”

Zithembe provides students of Langa help with resum? writing, job interview skills, sample job applications, access to university and college applications and course offerings, sample scholarship applications and life skills seminars and workshops.

Both Berger and Rosenstein, who expected to be in South Africa for only one semester, said they felt they had to give back to the people they met before coming back to the United States.

“The people I met were so giving and wonderful,” Rosenstein said. “They really taught me so much. I just knew I hadn’t done enough for them. There was no way I could have gone home without giving something back.”

Berger said he was also not ready to leave.

“I knew that if I could stay and completely devote all my attention and every minute of my time to this one cause it could be a success,” he said.

After approaching a contact person at the University of Cape Town and Father Pierre, a priest in the community’s church, the students were given space for an office in a community center affiliated with a church in Langa. Funds for the project first came from donations from people in the United States.

“I wrote over a hundred letters to businesses, firms and companies in the U.S. about the idea and I also wrote a letter to the paper in my town,” Berger said. “People were very generous.”

The students started out with about $5,000 and a donated laptop computer for the office that would be run by Berger, Rosenstein and Hastings.

The next step for the students was to do research. The South African school system is very different from ones in the United States, so the students worked to fully understand it.

“We didn’t have an idea about what we were getting ourselves into, but we were so motivated and so excited to do this,” Rosenstein said. “We just did all the research on our own, contacting schools for information and teaching ourselves and becoming familiar with the system.”

Berger said the main objective was to create a relationship with each university in the area. He spent a lot of his time getting in touch with every university in the Western Cape and trying to establish contact people.

The students also contacted high schools so that 11th and 12th graders would be aware of the new opportunity that they had.

Zithembe launched last August with a slow start.

“I knew it would be slow at first, until we had a success story and the word would spread about us,” Berger said. “That’s exactly what happened. Things started to pick up just because of word of mouth.”

Rosenstein said getting accepted into the community was one of the biggest challenges in the beginning.

“We really had to work to build trust,” she said. “We were foreigners almost invading their town with this new project. We were pretty much the only three white faces that they would see coming into their town each day.”

Berger and Rosenstein said they directly saw the effects of their work, getting to know the people they helped. The students said they knew the people they helped were getting jobs, getting scholarships or getting into universities because of their services.

“I felt extremely lucky and privileged to be able to help people achieve their goals,” Rosenstein said. “It’s so highly rewarding.”

Rosenstein and Berger worked to ensure that Zithembe remained even after their return home by setting up a board of trustees of 11 people. The center will soon be granted status as a non-profit organization, and their proposal for funding to the Open Society Foundation, a South African organization that gives three to five year grants to non-profit organizations in South Africa, was also approved. The group will receive about $38,000 a year for three to six years to keep Zithembe going. Hastings, its third founder, has remained in South Africa to run the center.

“We were really glad that Jennie was able to stay because it was so important to us to be able to keep the same ideals that we started with going even after we had to leave,” Rosenstein said.

After Hastings leaves at the end of the semester, the students said they hope to train and hire a Langa resident to work full time and a part-time counselor for the office.

Other than maintaining Zithembe from far away, the main problem they encounter is raising money.

“Our main drawback is the lack of money,” Rosenstein said. “If we had more money, we’d be able to get more computers and have the resources to train and hire people.”