On June 13th, 2009, Pace Academy students with 3 staff members travelled to South Africa to partner with Ubuntu Education Fund (http://ubuntufund.org/) and add their voices to the cause of over 40,000 orphaned and vulnerable youth from HIV/AIDS in the townships of Port Elizabeth.
Founded in 1999, Ubuntu Education Fund’s 56 person staff based in the townships in Port Elizabeth, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, serves 24,000 impoverished and vulnerable children and 15,000 families with life-saving HIV services and essential educational resources. Ubuntu Education Fund is based on the African philosophy of ‘ubuntu’, a spirit of common humanity, mutual responsibility and interdependence, and it is this spirit that Pace Academy is proud to embrace.
Following a recent visit to South Africa, Philip McAdoo, Director of Diversity at Pace Academy, who conducts performing arts camps in South Africa, thought it would be beneficial to Pace students to participate in an outreach program with youth from Ubuntu. The trip continues to draw support from local and international community. The students have been invited to participate in a traditional South African dinner at a Pace family home. The event will serve as a send off for the group as the family has agreed to sponsor a day in Johannesburg that will include a visit to the world renown, Apartheid Museum.
Once the group has arrived in Africa, All for Africa, a nonprofit organization, has agreed to allow family, friends and the world to follow their journey on a blog at www.allforafrica.org. The Manager of Corporate and Government Affairs at Volkswagen of South Africa, extend an invitation for the Atlanta youth to tour the plant and learn about the community efforts that Volkswagen is doing in that part of the world. In addition, the group will take off to Capetown to visit Streetwires, http://www.streetwires.co.za/index.php?mc=67. Streetwire project provides training, support and raw materials necessary to enable over 100 formerly unemployed men and women to channel their natural creative energies into this vibrant art form. While in Capetown, they will visit the place were Nelson Mandela was imprisoned and learn about the rich history and culture of Capetown, South Africa.
Finally it is back to Port Elizabeth, where the group will spend a week working and learning from the Ubuntu Education Fund. The week awareness program has been tailored made for the Pace students, as they interact closely with the Ubuntu organization and learn about the different life saving services they have implemented to combat the AIDS pandemic in the thriving townships on the Southern most tip of Africa.
In the spirit of ubuntu – a person is a person through other people – the Ubuntu Education Fund (”Ubuntu”) began its mission in the Eastern Cape to help improve the residents’ lives by fostering self-empowered, community-based health and education initiatives. The African concept of “ubuntu” serves as the spiritual foundation of African societies. Described by some as being “too beautiful to translate into English,” Ubuntu is an affirmation of our common humanity. It stands for a heightened sense of community responsibility that binds the residents to each other. What a wonderful lesson for our students to learn. UBUNTU.
