Teach with Africa

Teach With Africa Fellows of 2009,

I am privileged to be able to congratulate you on your first steps of a long journey with Teach With Africa and LEAP. This will be a journey of: hope and despair; pain and joy; clarity and confusion; intimacy and isolation. The crises of our unjust world may well take you from the relatively safe realm of external knowledge realities to the high risk of internalised and painful personal experience. Thank you for being so willing to risk in order to be a part of sharing. We ask that you abandon your expert knowledge and stay open to your vulnerable incompleteness as you make this journey.

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Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I have become aware that I am preparing for Africa in my imagination, sorting through fantasies, fixed ideas, fears, anxieties. Who are these people? What is this continent? What inside of me is already in conversation, in contact, with this thing I am calling Africa?

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Support Teach with Africa while you celebrate life with an award-winning bottle of Windsor Vineyards wine! On the weekend of June 26-28, the Windsor Vineyards Tasting Room in Tiburon will be contributing 10% of your purchase price to Teach With Africa. (Read on to learn about the custom Teach with Africa wine label!)

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We are delighted to announce the Teach with Africa Fellows and Faculty-in-Residence for our July/August 2009 program in South Africa.

Thanks to the tremendous support of our donors and volunteers at our February fundraiser, we raised more than $100,000 and are sending 20 educators this July and August to the three LEAP School campuses ¿ two in Cape Town and the newly opened school in Johannesburg. This reflects not only an increase in the size of our team (from 12 educators in 2008) but also an expansion to the third LEAP School, in keeping with our strategic plan to increase our support of the LEAP School across their network. 

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Larry and I just returned from two weeks in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Kwa Zulu-Natal, even more gratified and inspired than ever. Teach with Africa appears to be making a real difference in the lives of the LEAP students, who are succeeding beyond all expectations. We had a warm reunion with the eight “Ambassadors” who visited in February, and it was delightful to see them confidently pursuing their academic and personal goals.

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Hi Margie

I hope a enjoyed your stay in Cape Town. I’m sorry that I only saw you once- if I had much of a choice I would have been with you until your departure. You just don’t stop inspiring me with your giving and sharing spirit. You have created so much opportunities for my brothers and sisters in my beloved Leap school.

I’m doing quite well so far at Varsity. Wrote one test so far and passed it. This coming Friday we’ll have an Easter Break for a week and I’m writing two other consecutive tests when we go back to school on the 13th and 14th respectively.

Regards
Asanda

what you’ll think of
when i say 
“the torn blanket of sleep” 
might surprise both of us.

what you’ll be reminded of 
when i describe a bowl of soup
might make us laugh or cry.

our reveries, 
the color of the trees,
the names of our parents,
a word for pain,
will come to us in the same way
but they will tell a different tale. 

when we dream, 
whatever that dream contains, 
we will both be dreaming.
and whatever is the first thing to greet us in the morning, 
we both will have to open our eyes.

i tell myself
these things now
because you are so strange.
and because you are
foreign and unknown,
i know
i cannot see you.

it’s clear  
that because i’m frightened of you,
i’m blinding myself
with my own precocious understanding.

do me a favor,
will you?
stop me.
look at me.
help me accept the wisdom 
that not knowing is most intimate.

– gene alexander

Dear American Friends

We are in the final stages of packing and preparation for our exciting ambassadorial visit to the United States of America on behalf of the children and families of the LEAP Science and Maths Schools. Read more »

It would be hard to imagine a more relevant drama for all of us involved with Teach with Africa: against the backgrop of an education system in crisis, a hopeful African teacher struggles to lift his students above the strife and violence that is boiling in their black township. Current day drama or real-life scenario? Read more »

Some supporters of Teach with Africa are already involved in social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Are you in the thick of this, or are you wondering what they’re all about?

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