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Monthly letter – December 2021

alviraadmin — Wed, 22 Dec 2021 05:16:00 +0000

Hi everyone,

and so, a year has passed. I have successfully managed to write a newsletter every month for the whole year! Dedicating my time to do something regularly within a time constraint is not one of my strong suits. I have stopped doing many things in my life that fell under the same class of work – yet, with these letters it has been thanks to you that I have not only kept them up, but also thoroughly enjoyed writing them.

Personally, this year felt slower – ideas weren’t shooting out from person to person, interactions weren’t as frequent or as intense as in the initial 6 months of ideation. But, at the same time, the year felt more real – actual problems needed to be solved, actual steps were taken in us becoming a legal entity and actual work has been generated. These are not always flashy, simple to talk about or even maybe that interesting, but they are real. For me, a single small movement, is infinitely better than a thousand imagined ones.

It is with this reflection in mind that I thought I would share significant real events, steps and actions that the foundation has taken this year in moving forward with its intended purpose.

I would say the first significant milestone was a very “boring” one – we got ourselves our official NPC registration. A lot of legal documents, a lot of reading and editing. But what this allowed us to do is open an official bank account – and we know what this means. Moola!

Over the past year we have raised R150 000. Just over half of that has been from donations, the rest has been from internal contributions. Of the donations around 30% has been from Spain, and the rest from within South Africa. To all our donors – thank you, really. It is through these donations that we had the funds to get our first project off the ground – the Umazisi project.

The Umazisi project underwent a crystallisation process this past year – with Robyn and Tshepo taking lead roles they:

formalised content for workshops (this is really beautiful)
created a small internal logistic team
created a mentor interview process
finalised legal documents
found mentors
found a school – Sacred Heart College

lastly, the Umazisi project had its first mentorship workshop held at the Discovery head office in Sandton. It consisted of a series of talks from myself, Tyra, Elena, Luchy and Robyn on our philosophy of mentoring. My favourite part was seeing everyone listening intently and taking notes – that simple act of engagement made it feel very special.

Our group grew from around 12 to 50 regular volunteers/consultants and members – that is 50 people who are in some way invested in what we are doing here, 50 people who, in their own way carry out Alvira’s values or at least are on a process of discovering them. Many people who joined were as a result of the Alvira School philosophy meetings that began. So far, we have had a series of 4 meetings since August laying the foundation for the eventual school we will start.

From a social aspect we had four incredibly lovely Alvira events (the amazing race was my highlight). We would’ve liked to have had more, but due to social circumstances, four was the best we could do.

I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation; in total, with all the meetings, and discussions the various areas have had, we have accumulated around 2000 people hours of work and meetings this year – that is exactly 1 year of work of a single full time person.

In summary for 2021: We raised over R150 000, we gained about 35 members, we hired an employee, we finalised a project and we found a school to partner with us.

We have learned what works and what doesn’t; and with this we will forge ahead next year with renewed goals and objectives – all of which I will detail in the opening new year’s letter.

I am writing this closing letter from the beautiful views of the northern Drakensberg mountains (for the international readers of the newsletter, I highly recommend on your next visit to South Africa you visit the Drakensberg mountains – I will be happy to go there with you). I hope you too are reading this closing newsletter from a space of rest, a space of love, and a space of happiness.

I wish you a merry Christmas, happy holidays and a fantastic new year. For whatever next year brings, we are ready, and for ever happens we will figure it out, as we are in this together.

Kindest regards,

Luca Pontiggia

C.E.O

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Monthly letter – November 2021

alviraadmin — Tue, 30 Nov 2021 08:19:00 +0000

Hi all,

I feel a bit like a student again making sure I hand in my paper before midnight! I am sitting on a plane flying to Milan – making sure that I can send this letter by the time I land. A lot of my spare time that I would usually use to write these have been spent connecting with old friends or gallivanting around London – Now, I find myself in a little chair making sure I can keep to my word let’s see if I can do it!

General

I and Elena met Thomas Alvira’s son – Raphael – at his house in Madrid. It was a lovely experience. We sat for most of the time discussing his parents, how they met, how they raised him and his siblings – their love for teaching and their passion for freedom. One of the things he said which stood out was that, if we want to really reach the person, the family, the teachers within a school, we need patience above all else. Especially in South Africa where family dynamics are so different. This is something I will need to remind myself often; especially in those times where frustration and difficulties are inevitably going to show themselves.

At the school of Maria Teresa, where Elena works, a few of the teachers have had poor experiences of mentoring, And so, Elena who is in charge of the teacher formation asked me to give a talk on mentoring and give them an explanation of why mentorship is important from an anthropological level. I chose to focus on how mentoring is the external manifestation of a process that happens internally already – a process that we just need practice in – hence the mentoring. This is reflected in the diagram below:

There appears to be, through my observations, a type of feedback loop which represents the state of being alive – a “circle of life”. Mentorship comes into effect on the right-hand side, between our life and our actions. It is the process of strengthening our internal feedback loop that enables us to live authentically i.e. to recognise when our actions are aligned with who we are.

The talk was well received and we had a good discussion session after. After the positive reception, we have decided to give the same talk to the mentors during the Umazisi workshop. For those who are curious, I have attached the presentation.

Lastly, due to countries all going into slight panic mode around the new covid variant, Elena and Luchy have had to cancel their visit to SA, and as a result, we have cancelled many events we had planned. It is a real pity as the timing just doesn’t seem to be in our favour. We will eventually get it right!

Umazisi

This has been a huge month for Umazisi!! Sacred heart college has agreed to commit its support to this project. This means we will be starting the 2022 year with our first project going live. Thank you, Robyn, Elena, Tshepo and Tyra for putting in the effort and hours to coordinate with everyone, to create beautiful content and to persist in the search for mentors.

We have a workshop scheduled for the first week of December, It is meant to be an in-person workshop, but due to the coronavirus deciding to do a wardrobe change, we might have to keep it virtual. Either way, we now have the job of getting our mentors up to speed with our philosophy of mentorship and the content we created for the first year of Umazisi. This is pivotal to their ability to mentor with peace and confidence. The exact list of mentors is not set yet and I hope to introduce them to you in the following month’s letter.

For now, I just really want to give everyone reading this the opportunity to spend some time to sit and give gratitude to our first milestone for the Umazisi project and the foundation itself.

Thought of month

I feel this months’ letter is already rather lengthy and so will leave you with this video on what makes Beethoven’s 5th Symphony a musical masterpiece. I was brought up with classical music so I am rather biased towards it!

Kindest regards,

Luca Pontiggia

C.E.O

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Monthly letter – October 2021

alviraadmin — Sat, 30 Oct 2021 08:36:19 +0000

Hi all,

I write to you from the vivacious and beautiful city of Madrid. I think I have met more people and undergone more new experiences in this month than I have in the past 2 years. I am not going to give a whole account of my trip; that would be a bit cheeky of me given the context of these newsletters. However, I think I can share two reflections thus far:

The first being the difference in “living hours”. At 9pm in the evening, life in Madrid is only starting, whereas back in SA, I feel like life is ending. I could walk around at midnight on any night, and be almost guaranteed to find restaurants filled with couples, friends and families (little children included). It is a style of living which I feel suits people who seek more social interaction in the evening, I have discovered that I am one of them.

The second being the underlying unity of Spain vs constant tension I feel in SA. In Madrid, people who are mainly of a single culture and religion, are operating at a level which is far more conducive to “joyful freedom”– compared to in South Africa where are constantly working hard (or fighting) to agree on basic viewpoints and ensure total inclusion. My point is not to say one is better than the other; but, how they offer different things. For Spain, a sense of belonging and safety; for South Africa, solidarity and conscientiousness. I often wonder; imagine a South Africa where people feel safe – truly safe – feel cared for and feel heard. To heal and release of all the fear and pain that so often blocks us from moving forward in basic areas – all the hard work spent on the most basic of issues. Imagine how South Africa could move if it reached a level of fundamental unity and safety to then use its deep reserves of resilience, diversity, and hard work on innovation, art, science, culture, economics and, in our case, education. This would be a country of the future – a country founded and moulded by the suffering of the human spirt and transformed to achieve things we could only imagine.

I’ve added a few photos at the end of the letter for those who are maybe interested.

Updates

It has been a slowish month for Alvira. Myself, Tyra, Angela, Elena and Jason are experiencing far greater workloads than ever, and so, to balance all the ideas, operations and actions of an NPO we need time to manage our priorities. We want to move with certainty and, when possible, move swiftly not because we feel like we “need to”, but because we are fit and ready.

With regards to my networking and meetings – I will reflect in more detail next month when I have finished all of them. But out of interest, I am giving a talk on mentoring and the importance of it to

various teachers at the school whereby Elena works. I will be presenting a version of the presentation at the beginning of December when we have our mentoring workshop.

The school’s philosophy team met for a discussion on human anthropology to discuss if the human-centric view of the Alvira school is really what we want, or it’s just something that “sounds nice”. One of the major post-reflection outcomes of this meeting was that; when talking about the “type of school” the debate isn’t about what religious or cultural association it should have (Christian, Muslim, Jewish, agnostic, African, European) as we could, in theory, have any one of them. We might have 5 schools and each one with a different religious or cultural layer – they could each be an Alvira school. The point is that the school’s philosophy should educate at a more fundamental level – the anthropological one – and this should be compatible with any school. It is a bit like language; we all have a fundamental desire to express love, the language we use is just the filter by which the desire passes through. So, it is the same within the school; the “type of school” is irrelevant as it is just the filter through which Alvira’s anthropological education of the human being is expressed.

Thought of month

I suppose, in a way, my intro holds a little bit of a “thought of the month” kind of feel, but It felt more appropriately placed in the introduction.

Thus, for the here, I want to share another video from a channel called Mark Rober. This video is about a drive to clean up the plastic from all the rivers, seas and oceans.

His is a really incredible channel as his videos are entertaining, informative and heart-warming. His channel has grown to be one of the largest YouTube channels, reaching over billions (yes billions) of people. Him and another YouTuber giant, Mr Beast, are using their clout to create social change on a scale that no single government could ever do. It absolutely amazes me at how – when used in a life-giving way – a connected system (like YouTube) can create incredibly powerful change. I hope, that one day Alvira might have the same clout and use it to assist change, transformation and growth in government and countries so that they can effectively rally behind the human condition.

Kindest regards,

Luca Pontiggia

C.E.O

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Monthly letter – September 2021

alviraadmin — Tue, 14 Sep 2021 05:16:34 +0000

Hi all,

Last week (the 18th September) we had our birthday – Mexican themed – bash. I was chatting with Angela and laughed,– we are not actually sure what counts as the “official birthday”. But hey, who can say no to more than one birthday! There was a mammoth amount of effort that went into organising this – huge, huge, thanks to the events team, Nella in particular, who really went out of her way to put everything together on the day.

We had around 20 people attend all of whom chatted, played games and caught up around a fire later on in the evening – I think… I was unable to stay for the full duration, so I just came, said hello, ate, guessed how many sweets were in a jar and left. Despite my short appearance I got enough of a sense that everyone was sharing laughter and stories – amazing.

In October I will be going to Spain for a month. It is mainly for personal reasons (part of a longer 2-month work-cation). But Elena and I thought that If I do come to Spain we can use it as an opportunity to move forward with several Alvira related matters. I will mention more in the next newsletter, but for now, I can say it entails speaking to potential donors, meeting various people in Spain that have been supporting us from afar and, of course, meeting with Luchy and Raphael (Thomas’ son) and Pepe (institute) in person.

General update

Over the past few months I’ve had a number of people saying that they really want to help and if there is anything they can do, to let them know. At the time, although very grateful, we just said – “hold that desire, we’ll find something”. Well now, we have those “somethings”. We created a document (a bit rough for now) listing various tasks that we would need help with.

The QR code you see on the right is a link directly to the google sheet with all the information. In it you’ll see 29 tasks spread across our various areas – from finance to marketing to research. For every task there is a description giving a bit more information and adjacent to it the relevant contact person (see the second tab)

One example is for the research institute; to compile a summary of all the various educational research institutes in South Africa. This allows us to get an understanding of who is doing what – aiding us in potential networking and/or collaboration.

This will be a maintained list where we will add/remove tasks as needed. In time, it will be hosted on the website with a better and friendlier user design (possibly with embedded sharing functionality for social media and or friends). I have below the three tasks with the highest priority.

Thought of the month

This month has been a pretty intense one for me, and so I haven’t really had any particular thoughts and or experiences that I feel are worth sharing here. So instead, this month, I will share a video – for no other reason than I think it is nice.

I recently found the channel Great Art Explained. It explores the famous historical artworks and what makes them “great”. I have found the channels’ videos genuinely interesting – well explored and insightful. I recommend watching the other videos, but for now, I want to share one on Monet’s Water Lilies. It is a piece I’ve seen referenced many times, but knew nothing about! For example, in person, they are over 2m long! Hope you enjoy it – and if there are any YouTube channels you find yourself telling people about, please pass them onto me, I’d love to watch.

Kindest regards,

Luca Pontiggia

C.E.O

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Monthly letter – August 2021

alviraadmin — Sun, 29 Aug 2021 12:10:00 +0000

Hi all,

I want to thank everyone, who over the last few letters, has written to me, either thanking me or commenting on the letters. I have fun writing these; and so even if for just that, I would be happy. But to have people’s kind and constructive words on top of it all – well, it makes me genuinely feel warm and fuzzy. Thank you!

One of the short term developments I am excited about is that by next month we will have our Alvira foundation website (yay!!). Due to financial constraints, we have temporarily paused our social media marketing strategy and given way to the creation of the website. We believe that right now, investing in the website gives us the greatest advocacy per rand spent. It gives us credibility to outside donors, it gives ambassadors an action to their words and it gives people sight of our projects and our values. In the first version, we are deploying the bare essentials suited for donors and awareness. Thereafter, we plan to make it a hub for support, ideas and actions.

This month the events team are hosting a “Fiesta Bash” on the 18th of September – not 100% sure what this entails, but given the great track record of the team, I look forward to it and seeing anyone else who attends.

Have a great end of August everyone

Alvira Schools

Tyra and the rest of the philosophy team have been hard at work. We had a workshop last month where everyone wrote down their frustrations, needs and dreams of a school: “mind-body health”, “meditation”, “self-acceptance and personal truth”, “proper teacher compensation”, “connecting culture, history, creativity, nature and critical thinking into everything we do”, “catering for diverse social-economic background”, “community education” are some of the many, many ideas, thoughts and questions proposed – all in all, we had over 70.

With all of these we are now exploring what are our boundaries; what are those things that, for us, are so fundamental that we can’t see the existence of an Alvira school without them. It is a tricky exercise given that freedom is – I mean this in the best possible way – a pesky quality that continuously blurs boundaries away.

Thought of month

I caught myself saying something, that a year ago, I don’t know I would have.

Around 8 months ago I sent some sketches of a coffee table I designed to Sipho, an interior designer who has just started his business of designing and building custom work. We’ve had a lot of back and forth to ensure the table I had in my head could be realised. Admittedly after each iteration, the design got more and more complicated – materials he has never used and a design complexity he didn’t have the skill to draw on the computer.

After months of no progress, and a message suggesting I take the table to someone with more capacity to help, I called him. Reputation is the currency of a new business – a single dissatisfied customer can make you poor. Sipho, in many worried words, was confessing his struggles and shortfalls as to why he hasn’t been able to complete the project. His business is growing so rapidly he just doesn’t know how to continue finding new clients, manage existing ones, market himself and actually create everything. A creative soul, slowly being extinguished by administrative and logistical inexperience. Realising this I said to him: “…I’m more interested in human development than I am in product development”.

By which I mean – I am more interested in working on a project together where we both are challenged in the act of undertaking something new. The table is the product of this journey, the collection of uncertain choices, the summary of work and growth – a beautiful human makes for a more beautiful table.

I don’t know to what extent those words were as a consequence of being with Alvira, but I can quite safely say that, a year ago, I don’t think I would’ve said something like that. My point of writing this isn’t to give praise to Alvira, but to reflect that when we do the work of exploring our inner selves to identify our values, we give them a name. We speak them and we write them out – we give recognition to who we are and in so doing we give ourselves permission to live authentically. I have come to realise, that the values of Alvira Foundation: beauty, life-giving, harmony are names of who I am – what are the names of who you are?

Kindest regards,

Luca Pontiggia

C.E.O

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Monthly letter – July 2021

alviraadmin — Sun, 18 Jul 2021 05:16:00 +0000

To the Alvira family,

Sho… has it been a few weeks or what! I don’t think I’ve ever felt a period with so many things going on – the fireworks of emotion; anger, worry, fear, but also, resilience, defiance and care. Few times is the internal chaos of inner selves so aptly reflected in our immediate external environment.

There are times for action, for planning and times for quiet, for healing and rest. We are in the latter, we have a lot on our mind and our hearts – and because of this we have decided to postpone the planned trip of Elena and Luchy discussed in June’s letter. We will get there; we will have our training session, we will have meetings with the schools to discuss plans for the future – just not right now. We are provisionally discussing plans for early December as it is the next time that makes sense for us and Elena and Luchy.

On a practical and POPIA compliant note, as much as newsletters are helpful to give news and let everyone know what is happening in the foundation – you are free at any point to unsubscribe from them. If you so wish, just reply to the e-mail requesting to unsubscribe.

A word from Jason, our CFO:

In March we received our first round of generous donations which allowed us to budget for 6 months and move ahead with all our projects – in particular with the Umazisi content creation. We are now at the end of those 6 months and are running very low on our finances.

In light of this, the finance team has created a flyer that hopes to generate interest in both immediate and long term funding. I encourage everyone to send this flyer to family and friends and anyone who may be willing to help create a future for this foundation and everyone involved.

For the remainder of 2021, a total of R 85 000 is needed to bring us into the next phase of development. This includes several trademark registrations, a website, Umazisi mentor training and additional content creation. For more detail please see the flyer attached in conjunction with the newsletter.

Our proposal for either project is available at request for anyone who may want to know more about the foundation.

Thanks

Jason Gaskell
CFO and Public Officer

Updates – Marketing

For many months now, we have been investigating how to create a social media presence. What would this presence look like, how do we build an image of who we are which is both authentic to our purpose but also strategic and marketable to those who know nothing about us.

We have finally found real assistance in the form of a social media company called Vidhq.studio. Ntombi Ngubane, the founder, has generously volunteered her time in generating the initial content for our social media campaign launch. This will be across Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. Our first brainstorm session starts this week and we aim to have the launch within the next two months after having generated all the necessary content. Thanks, Ntombi and also Robyn who will be the person doing the admin of curating the post and posting the content every week.

Thought of the Month – who are we, when things go wrong

This months’ thought comes in the form of a video. A video which, to me, so well encapsulates what we all have experienced over the last few weeks. A video that asks the question: “who are we when things go wrong?”

The author explores how there seems to be an implied belief that amid chaos and difficult times we are alone, an “each person for themselves” kind of thing. A point most poignantly shown in post- apocalyptic stories where our true nature is selfish, aggressive and suspicious of one another.

But is this true? In the face of destruction or disaster, it has been seen time and time again that the outcome from these moments of chaos and deficiency turn into order and abundance by the will, empathy and resourcefulness of our fellow human beings.

What I find the strangest thing is that no matter how unpredictable disaster – man-made or other, the most predictable and certain thing, is the love we show one another to support each other through the worst. As the author of the video puts it: “There is something about a disaster that helps us understand who we really are, and, what we are supposed to do”

Is there space, that we can find this love and this support not only in moments of disaster and chaos but in the everyday life of our existence?

Kindest regards,

Luca Pontiggia
CEO of Alvira Foundation

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Monthly letter – June 2021

alviraadmin — Wed, 30 Jun 2021 12:25:00 +0000

Hello everyone,

in the previous two letters, I’ve mentioned that Elena will be visiting us in July. I want to dedicate some reading time to give a bit of context for why this trip is happening and introduce Luchy, who is travelling down with her.

Lucía Calvo (Luchy) has been with us from the start of the foundation. She has acted as an external consultant over the past year, guiding us through the nuances of starting a foundation that is fundamentally reliant on the human spirit.

Currently, Luchy resides on the board of *Arenales Red Educativa* – an international network of associated educational centers. They seek to provide students with high-level academic training and promote values that support hard work and service to others. Their relationships with schools around the world allow them to implement improvements both technological and cultural, to expand and share expertise. Their educational process is carried out in a context of absolute individual freedom as we teach lessons on responsibility, social transformation, and personal development that seek continual self-improvement for each individual.

By partnering with the Arenales network, through Luchy, we have access to resources, knowledge and experience guiding and supporting us to building a solid foundation (double meaning intended) built to carry out its intended purpose.

Alvira school

If you recall on the May newsletter mentioned our proposal for two teams to help us with the Alvira schools project – the philosophy and business teams. Late in May, the philosophy had its first meeting. A team of fifteen people, all with some involvement in a school, as a teacher or parent were introduced to Alvira, and our core philosophy of teaching. Over the next few months, the team will break down the why’s, the how’s’ and the what’s of starting a school. Drawing on everyone’s’ heart, mind and will we are excited to see our most ambitious project lift off the ground.

Idea of the month

I have been told many times growing up: “it gets harder to make friends as you grow older” – and as much as I stubbornly disagree, I do feel a growing difficulty to make meaningful friendships. But, why? Why should that be – to just accept the common response “that is life, we get busy”, to me, is frustrating and sad.

Then, three weeks ago, something happened that I had experienced many times as a young kid, but never took notice of. Sitting in a small restaurant in the Karroo with some people I’ve known

from varsity, I looked at them and suddenly thought; these are my friends and smiled realising what just happened.

We had all just woken up in a small church turned hostel after arriving the day before. Groggy, poorly dressed and hungry we got out of bed and walked to the restaurant. Waiting for our coffee we started talking, but this was a different conversation. There was an ease to it; the kind that ebbs and flows between the ridiculous, the serious and the silent. No agenda, no “having to catch up” – just being. It wasn’t so much “what we spoke about” but how we felt while speaking – we spoke our mind and felt happy and comfortable to do so. Somewhere in the moment, my inner me showed itself, was greeted and warmly welcomed.

That morning gave me a renewed sense – maybe we still can make friends just like when we were younger. what we need isn’t simply “more time and more effort”, but to find spaces which encourage us to feel comfortable with who we are and feel comfortable for others to see us – like kids playing in the park full of mud and dirt. For me, those are mornings, for you that might be in your pj’s or maybe after a long sweaty workout; a place where we welcome our true, undecorated, selves. And so, I don’t think it is more difficult to make friends as we get older, but perhaps, instead, it is more difficult to feel safe to show our true selves as we get older, and as a consequence find it more difficult to make friends.

Kindest regards,

Luca Pontiggia

C.E.O

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