Monthly letter – August 2021

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