One of the highlights of my life as a taker of notes and teller of other people’s stories was the six months I spent on the road with Louise van Rhyn, travelling around the country to visit schools and speak to the people who ran them.
An abiding memory will be the closeness of the bonds between
the principals and the businessmen and women who were partnering them. A principal
stood with her hand on the shoulder of her weeping business partner who was
mourning the loss of her mother; a prominent business leader took his principal
to the opening of parliament as his ‘plus one’; and a principal, once crippled
by shyness was described as ‘presidential’ by his partner – her eyes shining
all the while.
And we saw what was possible when good people put their
minds to it. The children at a tiny school in the middle of nowhere participate
in a mountainbiking programme designed for the poshest of private schools – because
the business partner asked the man who runs it to; pregnancy among the teenagers
at a township school dropped to zero, while in the streets around it the numbers were out
of control; and an army made up of the friends and relations of a business
partner who was tragically killed, took over his role and are still working
with that school.
We saw things you wouldn’t believe were possible, and they
happened because people stood up and partnered with each other.
And everywhere we went people were just so delighted to see
Louise. I realised that she was the force behind it all, along with the leaders
of the local circles that she somehow inspired to do the impossible too.
That's what it was – Partners for Possibility. It wasn’t a
programme concocted in a lab. The lives of many thousands of children were changed for
the better and a thousand schools changed from dysfunctional to
functional.
It’s a history that can’t be erased.
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