Christian Gap Year Program South Africa Pretoria Cape Town Target Life

About Us

Origins of Target Life

Target Life started as a gap year in 2006, but the concept was developed by Abel Loedolff since 1998. After studying engineering, he did two years of military service, taught at a high school for seven years and then developed the Prothesis concept (used by Target Life) in a local church environment. During his teaching years he was involved with industrial physiology, leadership development and had a youth ministry at his home with 60 teenagers attending every Friday evening.

The youth ministry was not trendy teenager stuff, but rather disciplined discipleship. When the Prothesis concept was launched as a gap year, everything fell into place and he soon realised that God had given him a great concept that was very effective. We gained more and more understanding of the psychology behind the process as we went along and kept on developing the concept as a team since 2006.

High Level of Personal Mentorship

We specialise in facilitating processes of personal growth and discovery in young people. Over the years we have consciously sought to remain both relevant and current in our approach to ensure that we effectively reach our constantly changing youthful generation. The combination of our team’s varied backgrounds, expertise and experience, creates a unique synergy in supporting what has proven to be a successful and unique programme. What distinguishes Target Life, is the high level of personal mentorship by our leadership team.

Future Benefit

The divide between high school, tertiary education and the ‘corporate’ sector is becoming problematic because young people’s lack of emotional intelligence is a major cause of failure. This deficiency is evident in the dropout rate of 1st year tertiary students and the growing number of students who change courses during their study years. This inadequacy equally applies to young adults entering the workforce after tertiary training. It is imperative, therefore, to cultivate self-leadership skills that will equip young people with both the hope and vision to become more competent in pursuing their future.

Social media has caused our youth to disconnect themselves from ‘old-fashioned’ communal activities and to live in a fragmented virtual reality. As a result, HR Departments are forced to provide extra training to make ‘next-generation’ employees efficient and stable in the workplace. The opportunities provided to students to grow their self-leadership skills during the Target Life year can significantly eliminate this problem, thus a long-term benefit emerges for tertiary education institutions, future employers, the individuals themselves, as well as the communities they live in and, ultimately, South Africa as a whole.