So They Can: Making a difference in Africa

When Lifetime Retirement Income Chairperson, Dame Diana Crossan, was asked to coach a recent returnee to New Zealand trying to get her not-for-profit established here, it turned out to be a very fortuitous match.

Cassandra Treadwell, who Diana had been asked to mentor, is the founder and CEO of So They Can, a not-for-profit organisation using education to change the future of children and communities living in poverty in Africa.

When Diana met Cassandra last year, So They Can was already working on the ground in Kenya and Tanzania, with an office also established in Australia by Cassandra when she was living there. Originally from Wellington, Cassandra was moving back to New Zealand and wanted to establish a presence here too. Once Diana understood what Cassandra was doing she broke all the rules of coaching, and jumped on board to help - becoming the organisation’s chairperson late last year.

Diana has been involved with many charities in New Zealand and believes in helping those in your own backyard, but meeting Cassandra encouraged her to use her energies further afield too.

“There is a quote from Mother Teresa: ‘The problem with the world is we draw our circle of family too small’. It struck me that this was an opportunity to do something for people outside this circle,” Diana says.

To date, So They Can has raised close to $20 million and is helping 45,000 African children and their communities. It helps through the 37 schools it supports in Kenya and Tanzania, along with the teachers’ college in Tanzania it constructed to improve teaching standards. Then there’s the children’s village called Miti Mingi in Kenya that cares for 120 orphaned and vulnerable children.

Education is the core focus, supported by their three ‘enabler’ programs: Child Wellbeing, Community Health and Support, and Women’s Empowerment. About 1700 women have gone through its micro finance business college for women for example and 280 teachers have graduated from its college.

It’s a huge achievement for Cassandra, the former lawyer who had her heart stolen by Africa while backpacking there after university. She eventually returned to visit a number of refugee camps in Kenya, finding one that particularly impressed her.

“When I asked what I could do to help they sat me down and gathered together their committee of 49 people representing the 45 different tribes in Kenya and presented me with a plan,” she says.

“Rather than asking for money or food like many others had, they asked for help to educate their children, because whilst they were living in this camp they had about 2000 children that couldn’t fit into the already overcrowded local schools."

“So, we negotiated a Memorandum of Understanding with the Kenyan government, entering into the first public private partnership in education in Kenya. They provided the land and we constructed a school and sat on the school board of management, and they put the local government teachers in there."

“That school is Aberdare Ranges Primary School (in Nakuru) and it now has 1080 children in it from pre-school to primary school.” All the year eights from this school have gone on to high school (the national average is 40 percent).

So They Can generates some funds for itself through things like selling bikes in Africa and teaching young single mothers to sew – they sew the uniforms for the school children and make products to sell internationally. Then there’s the natural skincare brand they’ve established called Essence of Humanity combining African and New Zealand ingredients with the help of Stacey Fraser, formerly of Trilogy. The skincare line is now available in Countdown supermarkets.

Cassandra, a mother of four herself, says she is driven by the opportunities they can provide children, and seeing their world view grow. When asked what they want to be when they grow up, most of their children used to answer with “a Mum” or “a farmer”, she says.

“Now they will say, ‘be an All Black’, because Conrad Smith (one of its ambassadors) has been over a number of times, or be a brain surgeon or a pilot.” Other ambassadors include musician Neil Finn and his wife Sharon, actress Miranda Harcourt, football star Andrew Durante and chef, author, and entertainer Peta Mathias.

One child really encapsulates Cassandra's work, she says. Faisul is a small boy who came to their village for vulnerable children at the age of four.

“He’s beautiful. He had a very hard background, but he’s incredibly positive. When I spoke to him when he first arrived I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, and he said ‘I want to be president of Kenya because I want to invite all the leaders of the world to come to my home so I can teach them what it means to be peaceful’. He absolutely captured my heart with his compassion and determination.

“Now when you talk to him it’s all – ‘I need to be president’. It’s not an ego thing, its genuinely that he has suffered, and he doesn’t want anyone around the world suffering anymore.

“If he wasn’t with us he wouldn’t be going to school, he wouldn’t have a home, he certainly wouldn’t have the support that he has from his ‘‘Mama’ in the village and all of us around the world,  His whole opportunities have changed.”

Cassandra says it’s not a one-way street. People who meet the children take away more than they give.

“There’s that beautiful exchange of material wealth for emotional wealth – they teach us how to live well.”

Interested in getting involved? So They Can welcomes corporate partners in addition to having options for individuals to sponsor a child, or make donations. Its Essence of Humanity products are available from Countdown or online at theessenceofhumanity.org. If you have any questions or other ideas that could help the organisation, contact cassandra@sotheycan.org.