Monthly letter – November 2021

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