How to Empower the Next Generation of Pilots | Refilwe Ledwaba | TED

Sometimes we tend to make people part of the problem only, but we don't make people part of the success. We're quick to say, "These were my challenges," but we're not quick to say, "But this person removed this barrier and this person removed this one." We need to start telling those stories. My name is Refilwe Ledwaba. I’m a helicopter and airplane pilot. I'm also an educator. I'm a founder of Girls Fly Africa, an organization that is teaching the next generation of young people, especially women, to learn how to fly. I started as an air hostess and then transitioned into a helicopter pilot, then an airplane pilot for an airline, and then a flight instructor. I was the first Black woman in South Africa to actually fly helicopters. When I was still a cabin attendant, some of the pilots used to come to me and they’re like, “You’re so smart, you should be flying the airplane.” They would call me during landings, you know, during take-offs. And I remember the captain, he actually looked at me, like, "Can you see what you're missing?" I’m like, “This is awesome! This is what I want to do.” That was the turning point where I actually started taking seriously that this is something that I really wanted to do because it was beautiful. But I had major challenges along the way. When I was training as a helicopter pilot, I had difficulty with a maneuver called hovering. It is a highly coordinated maneuver. The helicopter will move from one corner to the other because I'll put like one hand and then one hand, and it just didn't click. And I was really on the verge of being let go from the program. At that point, they changed the instructor. My new instructor actually took some time to get to know me. He asked me my background, how I grew up, what are some of the activities that I did. Because at that point I didn't have a driver's license, so I’ve never driven a car, I didn't have a bike when I was growing up. The people that normally come to flight school, they have much more developed motor skills. He understood that traditional training wasn't going to work for me. He sort of went back and redesigned the program. And I mean, within two flights of just doing that, I overcame that obstacle and I went on to finish ahead of everybody else. He actually didn't have to do what he did. It wasn't part of the syllabus, just to go out of his way to assist me. The way he looked at context, which is something that people don't think about, that inspired me to become an instructor as well, and perhaps do what he did for other people, recognizing that there's a whole lot of people that are coming from, you know, similar background that I did, that will probably struggle as much as I did. Girls Fly Africa inspires young people, especially young women, to learn how to fly. Most of our students, they come from rural areas that have never been exposed to the industry, and our program is set up in a way that it kind of looks at what are some of the challenges they might encounter. We identify five areas. The first area was most of them don't have information, just like me. I knew about only Tom Cruise, and he certainly didn't look like me so they don't have role models. Not role models to them, but to the communities as well, because most of the communities that we work with, they still have preconceived ideas of what women should be doing. We'll go and land in those areas, and so they will see us coming out of the airplane. Now they can see some people that look like them that have actually flown in. One of the first few people in the program, we actually landed at her school, and I remember she ran to the helicopter, like, when I landed and she came and she spoke to us, and she's like, "Oh, wow." Can she take our numbers? And then she attended our camps and, you know, some of our programs. And then we assisted her. And today she's an aeronautical engineer. The second thing that we did, we needed to build skills and capabilities. Like, for example, we'll put them in a simulator before they can even start flying. We have engines that we can show them. They can work on those engines. Now they have a clear idea of what an engine looks like before they can even start training. We've got programs that expose them to 3D where they build rockets, they build airplanes using 3D models. And then the third phase, most of these young people come from backgrounds where they can't afford to go and fly. It's too expensive. Like, if I had to tell my mother that she had to pay for my flying, she was probably going to smile and, "Yeah, right." Because it's the same amount as a house. Through our scholarship program, we’ve been able to train 100-plus pilots, drone pilots, flight instructors. The fourth phase is networks. Most of these young people, after they get trained, there's not a job waiting for them. We sort of advocate for them. We connect them with those job prospects so they can be able to build hours to be able to go into the airline. And then the last phase is the continuous support.

We believe that true empowerment is when they are at the top of their game, so they need to become training captains one day, you know, they need to become astronauts, not just study their degree and that's it. So they need to progress. So we create that network for continuous growth for them. So we have interacted with more than half a million boys and girls, and then about 200,000 have gone through our programs. That will mean the workshops, simulator workshops. And we've got five-day camps. And then in terms of the training of the girls that we've supported or partnered with multiple organizations for them to get trained, it's about 100, more than 100 girls. It looks like a small number, but to train a pilot, it takes quite long. The young people that are coming after me, they've got different challenges. But I've always said to them, go back and look at how many people have actually helped you. You will find out that more than 90 percent of the people, they actually want you to succeed. It's just that a lot of times we tend to maybe dwell on the negatives and we don't actually highlight the positives. I had a community of people that were behind me: my mum, all the pilots that called me, "You should be in front," kind of nudging me, my instructor, all of them were like, "You can do this, you can do this." They've inspired me and they've made it normal to do for others what they did for me. I think for me, that's the most rewarding part. [TED Fellows]