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05/20/2015 08:00 AMNelson Mandela said, “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.” For lucky 6th-graders at Vaatjie Primary School in Cape Town, South Africa, the world has just changed for the better, thanks in large part to the efforts of Andrew Larkins.
The Guilford High School alumnus (Class of 2010) and Quinnipiac University (QU, Class of 2014) graduate first visited the school as one of 12 QU students selected for a highly competitive, non-credit community service trip in January 2014. After he came home, Andrew decided to do something more to help the students.
Andrew started up People Helping People and, as part of class during his spring 2014 semester, launched “an all-or-nothing” fundraising campaign at www.indiegogo.com. His team raised $15,000 to purchase a modular classroom for Vaatjie school. In December 2014, he and “pivotal project partner” Corey Hibbeler returned to Cape Town on their own dime to see the new classroom delivered and installed.
The QU grad, now 23, has since returned to Guilford to work in the family business, A&W Sanitation and Excavation. On May 6, Andrew was invited to the state capitol to be recognized before the State House of Representatives, after a family friend notified State Representative Sean Scanlon about the work Andrew did to help the students.
“Sean told everyone about my story, and it was really cool, but I didn’t really want any recognition,” says Andrew. “This is not only me—I had a group I did this with, and it would have never have happened without all the people who donated to our campaign.”
Andrew’s also grateful to the principal of Vaatjie Primary School and to Tamerin, founder of Tippy Toes, a South African non-profit that runs the school’s holiday camp where Andrew assisted with other QU students.
“When I got back from that trip, I decided to do more,” says Andrew, saying he was struck by the situation he’d found.
“Those kids have so much potential, they just don’t have the support that they need,” he says. “It wasn’t until 1994 they lifted their segregation laws and said they were a free and equal nation, but the effects of apartheid are still prominent in South Africa, and glaring inequalities still exist. Without proper education, they’re never going to lift themselves out of poverty.”
Andrew said issues facing the Vaatjie school include being overcrowded, understaffed, and undersupplied, so that when the “graduates” go on to attend high school, they aren’t equipped to learn and instead tend to fall in with gangs or become subjected to entering into prostitution.
“It’s very sad. The kids need a hand, but the government in South Africa is still working out their issues, so proper funding for schools is a problem. Vaatjie is almost like a day care center instead of a school,” says Andrew.
One of the things he noticed during his first trip was the lack of definition between the 5th- and the 6th-grade groups.
“They shared one class split down middle, with one teacher, so 40 or 50 kids were all stuck in a classroom with no real learning going on,” says Andrew. “For the 6th graders, being in the same classroom gave them no sense of moving up. Then throw them into high school, and they’re lost. About 75 percent of the students at Vaatjie will go to high school and drop out of high school.”
When Andrew got back to QU, it wasn’t long before he began planning a way he could help. On his own, he began working up a project idea with a friend who’d also taken the trip. Things really began to click when Andrew enrolled in a social enterprise class.
“I learned so much from this project, and I didn’t get [classroom] credit for it and I didn’t want credit for it, but I was able to work some of it into my social enterprise classroom project my last semester,” he says. “The professor presented us with four or five local non-profits, and we were supposed to launch a project to support one. I talked to the professor, and he allowed me to make a group of my own.”
The group, People Helping People, first envisioned the entire QU student community contributing the crowd-funding effort, says Andrew.
“Me and my team, in our minds, we were going to captivate the Qunnipiac student body and get the whole student body behind the message,” he says. “Before the campaign launched, we did a pre-launch fundraiser, and we were outside the Student Center. The campaign started with a good spike in beginning, and then the funds kind of died off.”
Frustrated, Andrew consulted with his professor.
“The way he explained it, we were targeting the wrong audience,” says Andrew. “College students can barely afford to get a pizza! So we had to shift gears and look at a different audience, like family, friends, people in our hometowns, reaching out to former teachers. That worked. A lot of it came from Guilford.”
Community members, including many at St. George’s Church, were a big help.
“I’m really grateful to St. George’s,” Andrew says. “They let me speak at all Masses on Mother’s Day weekend. It’s an enlightened church, and they were great about receiving my story.”
Working with Tippy Toes and its quilting project (which supports South African women as quilt makers), People Helping People was able to offer incentives for donations including (based on amount contributed) T-shirts, soccer balls signed by the Vaatjie students, and quilts.
“So we were able to help those ladies and buy some quilts to give as one of the rewards for donating,” says Andrew.
In addition to learning much about starting up a charitable effort and funding it, Andrew says he got to know quite a bit about doing business in South Africa.
“I grew up in a family business —I used to walk to work from Adams [Middle School] to the shop when I was in 7th and 8th grade,” he says. “This project really was like running a small business. The biggest thing I learned was also one of the hardest: that there are very different business cultures. In this country, for someone not to get back to you is bad. So it was really frustrating that I wasn’t getting answers [from South Africa] as fast as I wanted.”
Andrew relied heavily on Tamerin to help nail down details beyond the “Don’t worry” overseas responses he was receiving.
“I had people donating, and the campaign had a huge following, so I felt a lot of responsibility to make sure it was getting done,” says Andrew. “Most importantly, I wanted it for the kids. I didn’t want to have any doubt, when I got on the plane, that it was going to happen.”
Last December, Andrew and Hibbeler used their own money to finance a return trip to Vaatjie Primary School. There, they watched the modular classroom arrive. The truck carrying the shiny, white, prefabricated building with dark blue moldings was a complete surprise to the students, who began screaming and cheering when it appeared, Andrew recalls, adding seeing the classroom arrive was a relief and a joy.
“We got there on the day it was going to be delivered and it got there,” he says. “It all worked out.”
Andrew stayed on in Cape Town for about two weeks.
“We wanted to see the classroom, spend time at school with the students, and learn about what else we can do to further our assistance to them. It was a really well-rounded trip.”
But the real reward will be reaped by Vaatjie 6th graders, now and in the future.
“After the classroom was built, the school was able to file for funding to get another teacher now that they have a 6th-grade classroom; and they got it,” says Andrew. “So now there is a new 6th-grade teacher and a new 6th-grade classroom, which is awesome. It’s just one step, and I’m sure it’s going to take time for them to see some real changes, but it’s really cool that a lot of things are going to be able to happen because of it.”
Andrew says he will stay in touch with the school and hopes to continue to hear news of progress.
“You go down there and try to have an impact on the kids, and the biggest thing you take away is the kids’ impact on you. It’s very special.”