Marlon Parker speaks in terms of “social revolution”, “economies of hope” and “currencies of people”.
His company RLabs operates in troubled communities providing counselling, training and skills development through social media and mobile technology, and his aim is to reach 2 billion people, a quarter of the world’s population, in his lifetime.
It’s a big dream for a man raised among eight people, living off a single state pension in his grandmother’s two-bedroom apartment on the Cape Flats, where life is governed by gangs and poverty, and defined by drugs and violence.