Where did we come from?

StarBright Learning Exchange was founded in 2004 as a not-for-profit Incorporated Association, set-up to establish a learning exchange with early childhood educators in Australia and South Africa. StarBright has been in the minds its’ originators Carol Allen and Karen Williams for several years.

Carol has worked in early childhood for thirty years, is South African by birth and, by setting up the StarBright Learning Exchange is refusing to sit by and watch the unfolding social catastrophe that has invaded her homeland. Carol also has been personally touched by HIV with a family member who is HIV+.

In 2003 Carol visited several orphanages in the rural villages outside Capetown and was appalled at the conditions these children were living in. There were little or no resources for baby and toddlers alike, living with no stimulation or learning activities at all. Carol was compelled to act and StarBright was born.

Karen has long held a passion for Africa after a visit in 1992 and learning then and since of the devastation from AIDS first hand. Karen has worked for charitable organisations with a focus on children’s education and family welfare for the past 15years. Now with two young children of her own Karen wants to do something practical and give back to the vulnerable orphaned children of the AIDS epidemic.

We have all seen and heard of the devastation from HIV/AIDS and the swathe with which it has cut through a generation, compromising economic and cultural stability. StarBright believes that the survival of children who are nurtured and educated from the earliest age can provide a brighter future of hope and possibilities that are currently not afforded to AIDS orphans; and we want to start in South Africa.

StarBright is committed to do something that will help some of the children orphaned by this terrible disease, so that they will not become the forgotten ones, stigmatized and marginalized.

We have talked to people like Prof Barnabas Otaala, who is working daily with AIDS in Africa. He says how important it is to work in partnership with the African communities. “In Africa there are strengths that are universal yet rarely recognised by outsiders and even by those inside. Within communities there are people who are helping others – what can we do to help them?”

So what to do ???

Carol & Karen have started the StarBright Learning Exchange as a not-for-profit incorporated association.

We will:
» Listen to communities
» Interpret their strengths
» Not impose our western agenda
» Build onto what the community already does and knows