An Unexpected Discovery
m
A kitchen visit with friends in Alexandra.
Make a Difference
By Bonni Brodnick year. The Ubuntu Club began by helping pay kids’ tuitions in the lower and middle schools. We’re expanding our program to high school, which is where we can really help make a difference in broadening student job opportunities.” The Ubuntu Club contributes scholarships and has helped launch an HIV/AIDS education program at Bovet Primary School and Kwa-Bhekilanga High School. Last December, the club made nearly $1,500 in the Upper School lobby by selling crafts, belts, Christmas ornaments, and necklaces made by mothers in the Alexandra township. “After meeting South African children last summer, we saw that we can really make a difference. It will take outside influence to hasten change. I’d like to be a part of that,” Mack said. Donations to the Ubuntu Club were contributed to Bovet Primary School, and Kwa-Bhekilanga High School for their HIV/AIDS program. For more information, please contact Mack Abbot at wabbot@gmail.com.
Summer 2007
to attend, which is really difficult for many of the families. Mark is the local hero because he ‘made it out,’ even in the worst of times. He became fluent in English and Afrikaans (the South African national language at the time), but his passport to freedom was his talent at tennis. In 1978, with the help of 1972 Wimbledon champion Stan Smith, Mathabane left South Africa to attend an American college on scholarship.” Last summer, Brunswick students Sam and Bud Vallely, Tyler Davis, Harrison Waddill, and Mack Abbot traveled to South Africa. When they returned home, they joined fundraising efforts that Mack had begun as a freshman, and together launched the Ubuntu Club, which was originally started as a scholarship fund for the Bovet Primary School students. “Education is the last thing on many parents’ minds in South Africa,” Mack said. “It’s a difficult choice between caring for children, cousins, grandparents, and extended family, and paying for an education. They value it, but it’s never a given that they’ll be able to afford the $16 it takes to send a student to school for a
23