First one!

Firstly, welcome! Thanks for being interested enough in who we are and what we do to find out a bit more! I have to admit I’m feeling the pressure of writing the first Beyond Ourselves blog, so here goes…

Over the coming weeks I’ll introduce you to members of our team so you can get to know us a bit better, plus we’ll keep you updated with various events that are happening and any news we have to share.

But for now I just wanted to share a little a bit of our heart with you. Throughout our lives we’re encouraged to think about our future, from a young age we’re asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, we respond with the standard answers of teacher, policeman, vet – I know because I used to be a teacher! Then as we get older we have to choose subjects to study, a career path, to make a plan, to pursue our dream.

As the homeless man asks in Pretty Woman “What’s your dream? Everybody’s got a dream…”. (That film is an office favourite by the way!)

And so we dream of the future, what could lie ahead for us, what we’ll achieve and where we’ll be in 5, 10 or 20 years from now…

But do any of us ever take time to dream for others?  Do we even dare to do such a thing? When so many people’s dreams are self-centred why bother dreaming beyond ourselves? What difference can we make anyway?

Maybe we rarely dream for others because we think that the world expects nothing of us?  Maybe we just feel too small to make a difference on any scale? Working in Africa has its challenges and the need at times can be completely overwhelming but when we as a team look back at the past few years and think of each child, each teacher, each family that has been impacted, we’re glad that we dared to dream for others, that we chose to make a difference to the one.

 So, like every good teacher, I’ll finish with a story:

There was a man who was walking along a sandy beach where thousands of

starfish had been washed up on the shore. He noticed a boy picking the

starfish one by one and throwing them back into the ocean. The man observed

the boy for a few minutes and then asked what he was doing. The boy replied

that he was returning the starfish to the sea, otherwise they would die.

The man asked how saving a few, when so many were doomed, would make any

difference whatsoever? The boy picked up a starfish and threw it back into

the ocean and said "Made a difference to that one..."