Unlikely Heroes: Helen Lieberman at TEDxEuston
[Music] I feel rather humbled to stand here because I just have a little story of thousands of people who worked very quietly on the ground and I've had the privilege today of hearing the most amazing people from Africa. and other places and I feel I pale in existence just to have heard you. So may I congratulate you all. I think you are outstanding. [Applause] So my story is one of supreme privilege of being able to walk a walk along ai aside thousands and thousands of South African mamas and some tatas from when I was 20 21. And it was a story of discovery, of privilege, and of an unbelievable, unbelievable experience. And may I please share that with you today? the work that we did together over the years when we were in and out of prison together and in and out of police vans and police stations and when terrible things happened to some of us. We now very proudly present Ekumba Labanu which is a non-government organization owned by the people on the ground. For those who haven't been to South Africa and to to Cape Town, this is beautiful Cape Town where the town nestles underneath a wonderful mountain called Table Mountain with the most beautiful peninsula where many of us live in utmost luxury. This is the other side of Cape Town. The Cape Town I found when I was a young girl. And I'll tell you the story a little later. This slide is the same slide as you've just seen 25 years later. So there isn't really much improvement. Although there's freedom, we don't have economic freedom. This is how most of our people draw their water. What I labante does and has done is cares for vulnerable children. Vulnerable children who are in preschools, who are orphans, and we do it through the mamas. The mamas take in the children. This is an example of a mama who can she's got 14 children and she can love 14 children. I had three. not a good job or a granny whose whose children have passed away from AIDS or AIDS related illnesses and she has a child and I'll tell you how we do that. These are child this is a child- headed household. You can see the these are two sisters and I'll go on to tell you how we care for these children. Usually we find the beginning of a preschool in something like that looks like this. And how we work together is to create a preschool that looks like this. So that preschool turned into that. That's the same preschool. The care for the senior citizens is not non-existent at all. And I'll tell you the story of how we started caring for seniors, turning them in turning um opening up centers that created seniors enjoying their lives being productive. They produced amazing things. And in the end with all the pro programs we found that we could not we could not service all the thousands of programs that we that were part of Eumba. So we started building multi-purpose centers in strategic points throughout the townships and um during the bad years I uh founded a corrupt official who was prepared to sell me land very cheaply and I was as corrupt and bought the land and registered. [Applause] It wasn't a very pleasant story because it follows another story and bought the land and registered it in the name of the community because I I never wanted to own land that I should not own and um ne not even knowing that one day I'd have the opportunity to create. I have 19 centers now with help desks and activities and you'll see and they're places of joy and wonder. These are the type of meetings we have with communities. We run very few meetings as an organization. Communities run them themselves. But living in a shack land as they do, where would they meet? They have their community centers. Then there's smaller groups of mammas that meet in area forums. So it all cascades in different groups that feed into the larger groups of different um processes. Orphans, preschools, after school programs, seniors, youth programs as you see here, we run youth programs. There is a lovely little story if I may quickly tell you that um when I when a young lovely young man came from America offering to give chess lessons um I was a bit nervous about it because I couldn't you know when you mentioned chess to the children they didn't quite understand what I was talking about but there was a group in in who lived in in the shacks near one of the big centers that we have and they said they'd like to try. So we took these kids and we he started teaching them and they just loved it. They came every afternoon and you can't just bring children in after school and and um teach chess. You you've got to feed them. You've got to do much more than that when a child comes in because their lives are very different. And the care that you give them and their safety walking each child home that they aren't they aren't accosted on on route home. So it was a whole setup. But to cut a long story short, everybody said as usual, you know, when I see something and I want to do something because we're overwhelmed with work and overwhelmed with duties that have have to be properly properly executed. I'm always told, "Leave it. Leave it. Don't do it. You you know, you you you lumber us with more more to do." But to cut a long story short, nine of these children are now South African chess champions. one will go to New York and she's just been orphaned and her mother has just died and uh so that you know it it's very sad that her mother didn't live to see her daughter being able to go to New York in our centers tremendous amount of training goes goes on and we try to keep the training in indigenous language and done by our own people. It's much more meaningful. It It's much more appreciated and it's right. And one of the joyous things is when a mama is barely literate because of lack of opportunity and she graduates with a Sitta accredited certificate. I don't think one can understand that feeling of pride because all her life she's cleaned up after others. She's been told where to live and she's been knocked around by the system. And here all of these have become registered homebased carers. Yes, they will go out and help our other, you know, our nursing and caring for people that are terminally ill, but they now have certification and with it is the celebration and all our centers there's regular celebration and um it's lovely. It's wonderful to watch and each each center and all over we have our gardens and you know it this was just a snapshot that I took of the pride and the wonder of having your own piece of ground and we don't think of that having your own piece and planting your own vegetables and you owning them or allowing others to take it at your wish. This is our I've just come from the Clinton Global Initiative. I was very very surprised. little me from South Africa who spends my life running around the townships got this wonderful co phone call and then followed by an email and I was given an invitation to present and then eventually um a present a paper on the new work that we're doing which is I'm establishing or we are establishing our own experiential learning um ECD early childhood development college with um a parent center. There is no parent center. There's nowhere for anybody to take their child who might have challenges or even for a young many ch children we have in our preschools are children of children. There's nowhere that you can coach that young person how to bring up their child, what child development is, what type of support they would might need, where they can take it. So this is a a very big step forward and it's quite a gamble because it needs support and I'm working on that and it links into the most important thing which is oh that's the type of child that I want to achieve. Many of our preschools create children and grow children like this but that's that's the ultimate goal for that. But it links into next into this center that I've just built which gets launched on the 2nd of December but been running for a year with a health center. And the health center isn't about us providing health services. It's about letting people understand that you don't wait till you're ill to go to a doctor or to see your health or to take responsibility of your health issues. It's about preventative health. It's about understanding yourself and those that you care for and how to remain well. And it's called eullequeeni. And eulaqueeni means freedom. And when I asked the people why did you call it freedom? It was freedom from in ill health. Freedom. Freedom to be able to be well. Freedom to take control of myself. And we were given we were voted the viodiccom phones the um leading NGO in in South Africa and we were given as our gift a doctor and here you see the doctor talking to the mumas and we started a new thing. Men don't find it easy to go to a doctor with any problems. They're just macho and nothing goes wrong with them. So we've now opened a men's health and this this gentleman felt his personal issue could not be done in the center. He had to meet outside the center to speak to and they'll get used to that. A lot of HIV AIDS counseling caring um that is very open. I run around the townships in a positive t-shirt and the positive means positive about AIDS, positive about illness, positive about dealing with my issues. And we've just opened the first eye clinic in the townships. We found that 45% of the failures in Kaichi, which is a very large township, 45% of the children had visual problems. They're failing school because they can't see. and nobody's testing or seeing to it. So we've opened and we were given this wonderful facility. Um so now my story, how did it happen? Well, I was all of 21 when I was I took on my first position at a major hospital in Cape Town and I was given the black position. I'm a speech pathologist, a speech therapist and it was the most horrific experience because in the black section there was no apparatus there was very limited therapeutic time and I had very severe cases of lingjectto facial repair what all the accident cases brain tumors and my patients were just discharged as you know as as they were going home to die and when I challenged this my superiors on on the white side of the hospital. They told me this these were their words that they did not want more for them. And for me, standing in front of my superior woman, it was like a dagger. It was it was so unjust and it was so wrong. And I was totally unaware that that was the position in South Africa. I I don't know how I grew up not understanding or knowing the effect of a partate and the hell it was creating for for our fellow citizens. And so how did I do how what happened is that I went looking for my patients in the townships. It was very difficult to get there because of the military, the police and I didn't know where to go and I didn't know that the the road of discord would begin. I eventually found somebody that I bullied and I threatened to to take her to the police if she didn't take me to the townships to see the child that I knew was dying. She became my closest friend. She hated me from the first day she met me because of the questions I asked in the hospital because she thought I was an informer. And anyway, she took me and I found the baby and I I I found the townships. I cannot express to you the hell and the horror that I saw. It was 1963. The poverty, the stench, the fear, the military. It it was the most terrible experience and something that I still get nightmares about. And it was a time I felt I didn't want to live. It was it was just terrible. I took the baby back and I got into trouble. My first warning letter and but I I was compelled to go back day after day after day which I did and of course arrest after arrest. But I started working and there was nowhere to work. I worked all over the place at the backyards in the under the trees in the sand and the wind and the rain and but I went and um unfortunately a woman came and offered me her key to her little house. And as I stood there and she said to me, I know what you're doing. Um I I couldn't believe that somebody could bring me the key to her house. Would I have given her the key to my house? Anyway, unfortunately the key that apprised the police that because lines and lines would stand for me every afternoon after work. And so for all of us, all that terrible stuff started. But then wonderful things happened and this is what I want to bring to you. People came to me and I hadn't thought I hadn't thought of an organization. I hadn't thought of programs. I hadn't thought of social development. I thought of nothing. Just worried about all the people that I was dealing with and I was too young and naive and stupid and I can't tell you the things that I did. But these wonderful women came and said we have children all over and we don't have there wasn't one preschool, one senior center, one place formal place that peop children who were orphans were cared for. There was nothing. It was a barren hillhole. And each one of them expressed as they came to me and said, "We we'd like to do something with this lady. Her name is Tuti. We opened all the places of care for seniors." I cannot tell you how she has been knocked around and tortured and she's still there fighting for the seniors, fighting for their for for their rights and serving them day and night. Next one. This lady is Nomsa. Nomsa passed away last year. This year, she was the lady that said their children all over. And we we took the furniture out of our house and we brought the kids in from the street and I covered it with plastic for the rain. And so started the first preschool which then spread all over the country. And 10 years later, I had a thousand of those all over the country cuz I just was running all over. Time's going so I can't tell you too much. This is the woman that I would like to or tell you the story that she came to me and said, "There's 6,000 children in the sand dunes over there. They can't read or write and there's no school." And she made me go with her and we went and there were 6,000 children. And I, if you can believe, you try and get 6,000 children to stand and count them. You try and divide them into age groups. They listened and they did it. And she had 20 women who she said could read and write. And she said, "I will be the principal and you will build the school." And I stood [Music] there for five years. We sat on stones and paints. We wrote with sticks in the sand because I was a named person. I'd by now lost my job. I had a criminal record. I've been thrown out and I'd lost my life because as a named person and being followed with security police, other people ran away because they their husbands wanted government contracts or whatever. So I sort of but I didn't notice that nobody was my friend anymore. I I because I I had the privilege of more wonderful friends and for me I carry them in my heart forever. They my true friends because they have they have built South Africa. They have created the social development of South Africa. I wish I could finish the story about her because Mandela visited Mandela on the island. Um, Darling Madiva heard about Florence and heard while he was there all those years because he told me when he met me one day and um when he came off out of out of prison he asked for one thing and that's to go and see the the mumas and now we had built a school and we'd created a a syllabus and the 20 mas that were with them he'd created it and he'd he'd gone to see it. But my message is that here I stand as the fairy godmother. Believe me, I'm not getting the profile, getting the praise for something that I really didn't do because I sacrificed very little other than a few friends who today I can't create friendships with because I don't have much in common with them unfortunately. But there are magnificent amazing people on the ground who were the backbone and the builders of our country who kept our country alive and created the social development of our entire country. So if you think of South Africa, my my words are don't think of the great leaders and they're not such great leaders. Don't think of all the other things. stand up and praise the women on the ground who sacrificed their lives and there were many many whether thousands because we have on record over a million children that have passed through their hands not through mine and they have been the backbone and I dedicate this talk to my mas in South Africa. Thank you. [Music]