I'll get a tat taps. Who else would bloody be? It's the you project. It's Annabelle, it's me, it's us, it's you. I hope you're good. It's three oh five on a Tuesday as I sit down to chat with my new bestie of a rock solid three minutes we've been connecting, so, I mean, if we don't know each other by now, we never will. Hi Annabelle, Hi, Greg? How are you? I'm very good. You and I were just talking off there. I'm going to throw you under the bus straight away. Yeah, I'm not at all. I'm
not at all. You were saying that when you when you were doing some corporate stuff like standing in front of corporate groups, that you'd have a bit of performance anxiety. Like just meeting you momentarily, that seems like you seem like a very relaxed, kind of spontaneous, organic in the moment person. What was it that? What was it that freaked you out about standing in front of corporate audiences?
Ah, you know what, I think it's the story you tell yourself when you're well. For me, the story I was telling myself was that if I was being paid to do a job right, that I was I worth as much as I was being paid and so therefore, and you lose sight of the fact that you're talking
to humans, you know. And I think what was scaring me was, Oh, you know, I'm talking to these people from Optors, and they're so much better than me because they work at a corporate and I found it a charity, And what's my story even going to evoke in them?
Anyway?
They're just going to think, oh, who's this girl and what does she have anything to do with me and my job? You know, And then it would like that would be the start of the narrative, and then for me it would just get louder and louder, and then it would almost cause me to trip myself over because of the imposter syndrome and the negative voice inside my head telling me then my story or you know, I guess what my experiences were weren't worth sharing.
Yeah, it's totally lace to start. Yeah, well no, but it's I mean, everyone's everyone's scared of stuff, right, It's like that your challenge is not to be fearless. Your challenge is to be courageous despite your fear. And of course courage can't exist without fear and exactly like, I'm scared of a hundred things. But you know, if I wait until I've got no fear or no performance anxiety or no bloody imposter syndrome or no self doubt or no insecurity, will fucking good luck, I'll be sitting in
a bean bag till I die, you know. So, I mean, this is the ever present challenge of you know, of becoming a better version of you and building something that the world needs or wants or will be on value like you've done serving people. Is It's like whatever you start at, you're always a white belt, you know. So, whether or not it's literally martial arts, you're a white belt, or building a charity, you probably look back, do we call it a charity or not profit? What do we
call not for profit? It is?
I mean, at the end of the day, it's a charity. I just feel that the word charity has some negative connotations. Okay, so you know, I guess the word not for profit seems to be or even for purpose. I think it's an interesting one because it feels a little bit less of helping the poor people and more about empowerment.
They're so good, such a nice distinction. But I bet when you started that you look now and go, fucking hell, how much didn't I know? How many? How many dumb things did I do with great intentions?
But how much better is it when you're twenty years old and you don't know as being and you've got beginner's mind and you are, you know, just full of passion and naivity. And that was literally it. It was like I could build a school for a few kids,
and I can make their lives a bit better. And you know, little did I know I was going to need you know, licenses, registration team, you know, money, all of that, everything that comes behind sort of wanting to just start a school in Africa and you learn on the fly. And I think in some ways naivity was one of the most powerful tools that I had stop stopped me from being scared.
Yeah, well, you don't know what you don't know, and sometimes what you don't know that you'll find out eventually, But in the moment of not knowing it, it is it's kind of a psychological advantage because you don't even know that you should be scared of that because you don't know it exists yet. Exactly when I set up the first personal training center, which is not comparable to what you've set up because yours is much more philanthropic
and noble. Mine was a commercial business. But I set up the first personal training center in Australia in nineteen ninety when you were just a twinkle in your mum's eye. Oh no, four, Okay, you're four? Okay, Yeah, I was nine.
I was an early starter. But if I had have known how much shit I didn't know about about leasing premises, about legal, shit about hiring and firing, about administration, about insurance, about all the potential complications around training thousands of humans and all of the myriad of psychological, emotional, practical, physiological issues that come with that, and like I spent like you, I'm sure I spent the five first five years of my business just solving problems on a daily basis, and
problems that I was dealing with for the first time, yeah.
And not knowing how to deal with those problems because you've a never dealt with them before and be kind of are literally kind of in the cold face of things that you've just never even expected now, And to be honest, look, it's probably not dissimilar right now. It never sort of seems to change. When you're running a business, you're continually thrown curve balls and challenges that you haven't you know, foresee are going to be around a corner. Yeah so, I mean, but that's for me, that's what
it keeps it exciting. That's why I'm still here because no two days are the same, and I love that.
I'm sure there are a myriad of answers to this question, But what were what were some of the things that you just never expected in terms of setting up you know, they're not at School for Life, right, in terms of setting that up? Be they sociological, financial, cultural, legal, Like what what was one or two of the things that you went, fuck, I never even thought of that, and that has been a really big challenge or I didn't anticipate it.
Oh gosh, there's been a lot.
I think maybe a better question is what don't people get about setting up something like School for Life.
It's probably just genuinely that it is a business, right, you know, And I think when people think of charity, they don't you know, I still get asked everywhere I.
Go do you get paid a salary?
Or if not, how do you survive?
Every room?
I speaking really, and I believe in my heart that it's because when you run, you know, a charity and not for profit however you want to name it, people believe that all that's for volunteers and they don't think of it like a business. And so I think that's that kind of has continually shocked me. And then, you know, people say quite kind of negative and weird things to you at times about you, for example, wasting your skills
and talents on you know, starting something. You know, you would have been a great lawyer, Annabelle if you had have just pursued that, And it's kind of a weird, it's a very it's a very strange thing to say to somebody. I wondered, you know, if I was in a commercial space where people say something similar, you would have been great at starting a charity, Anabelle.
Why did you go and do that? You know?
So I guess there's that which I find interesting, and I suppose, yeah, the whole concept that people don't really see it like it's a business that I'm running is essentially what it is.
How dare you spend your life as supporting and helping disadvantage people? Do you stop wasting your life doing all that selfless bullshit. Get selfish women, make it all about you. Fuck them? What are you doing? Stop being so generous and philanthropic and compassionate. People are funny. Humans are funny, aren't they? You know they are? They are? God bless them. Yeah.
Oh, I mean that's also part of it. I guess, bringing people along for a journey and getting them on board and selling a vision of something that they couldn't
see because of course it didn't exist yet. It was a really interesting process, I think, you know, at the end to kind of Ripe Age of twenty trying to sort of stell a vision of schools in Uganda that myself and my core founder we're going to deliver on was quite you know, the amount of naysays and critics was huge because people were just like, you're insane, how would you possibly think that you're going to be able
to do this? But I think and then you know, to that point to then try to build a community around it of like minded people who wanted to be able to support it, you know, in an ongoing way has been really interesting. And yeah, humans are interesting and they're different, so it's amazing.
So I had this question because you've probably been asked for a thousand times, but I don't know, and my listeners don't know the guesser. So what was the genesis? Like? Did you go over there thinking I'm going to go and do some research, a bit of a wreckie, I'm going to see what the needs are and I'm going to meet those needs. Or were you just over there doing stuff and you went, oh, fuck, there's a real hole here that needs to be filled and maybe maybe
I could be part of the solution. Is how did it go? Yeah?
So I wanted to work with the UN that was my goal. I was studying arts law at Sydney UNI, and I was learning French because I wanted, you know, I was I'd already was speaking it fluently and I wanted to remain bilingual. And so I was like, but I want to use my skills to make a difference and I want to work with the United Nations. And so I decided to volunteer in Kenya to get some
kind of field experience. And when I got to Kenya, Kenya had a civil coup in two thousand and eight when there was extreme election violence and I was evacuated across the border into Uganda, and if I'm really honest with you, it was kind of this strange moment because the organization that I was volunteering with didn't have an operation over in Uganda, so they kind of wiped their hands clean of us, and we were left kind of
just figure out what to do. And so I looked at a whole bunch of different projects, and I was quite dated by what I saw in the bigger international NDO space because I felt, you know, they felt like quite a lot of resources were being wasted. And hence the reason I guess I wanted to start something grassroots, where I went, well, actually people need education. Education is something that you can't take away from people, and so if I could just build some schools and get some
kids educated, then that would make a difference. And so it sort of went from kind of, I guess, a view of kind of where I wanted to work career a career wise, to changing into kind of a whole, a whole different life. Really, it is a life that I've completely built.
And love. So what you know, I'm just listening. Because I'm thirty percent female, I can multitask. Do you know how many people live in Uganda off the top of your head. Yes, forty eight million. Wow, that's yeah. I just you're right, you're right. And in Kenya is fifty four million. And I'm I had you could have told me seven million, I wouldn't have known. I mean, I really, I really didn't know. And that is that's massive. Well, that's double our population nearly, isn't.
It in a landspace the size of Australia state of Victoria. Yes, yes, So it is densely populated. Women are having you know, six to ten children, wow, and fifty six percent of children complete primary school. So you're talking about a very uneducated place, and sadly that's just because of lack of access and lack of opportunity, and you know, by nature of birth, they've been born into really vicious cycles of poverty that are very difficult to break free from.
So you get kicked out of Kenya kinda and you end up in Uganda with your did you say your sister?
So I had a friend there from school, right, and we were there together, and then there were some other volunteers that were also Yeah.
So all right, so give us a little bit of the events between that, and you know, school for life, Like, what where did you start? What light bulb happened? What was the first decision or awareness?
Yeah, I think pretty much just not having anything organized to do, so therefore just needing to roll our sleeves up and figure out how we could actually be helpful. And I mean we're talking. I'm a twenty year old. I'm not really helpful at all, let alone and my helpful, you know, trying to teach English to children. But it was there in the kind of government schools that I
realized there's massive issues. You know, you turn up to a classroom that was full of broken down furniture, no blackboards. The children were walking five to ten kilometers every day with no shoes on their feet, on empty stomachs to get to these classrooms. But they were doing that with
a smile on their face. And they were still doing that even if they were turning up to what we would perceive to be the world's worst classroom, because they know that education is something that's going to break them free from the cycle of poverty. They know that education is going to give them opportunity. And so I just thought, my God, like we take so much for granted here
in Australia. I was so lucky, you know, and literally it's just the lotto of life has had these children born here into a place where they don't get an education, and we we're so lucky. How can I use what I've got to do something? So it was kind of that scratch your head moment. And I think there's also some I guess there given the statistics around Uganda, and I won't kind of bore you with them, but the problem can feel so huge. It's the fifth youngest population
in the world. It's a huge population living in a very small country. So many kids aren't getting a chance, and it would be so easy to just walk away and just go, oh, don't even know where to begin, yes, But rather than do that, it was more about, okay, well, how do we just put one foot in front of the other and do something for some kids, because you know, something for some kids is better than nothing for no kids.
And so then I came home and I'd met my co founder over in Kena and we just caught up for a drink and we both spoke about how we had to share vision and desire to provide education to kids, and then we started scratching out business plans and pretty much just talking to anybody that would listen about our ideas, most of whom said, you know, you're crazy, come back to us when you finish your UNI degrees, or don't come back to us at all, because you know, who
are you anyway. But it was sort of those naysays and critics that kind of fired us up and we were like, we can do this.
So started fundraising and then went across.
The premise of School for Life that we've always built on was that these schools need to be own and run by local people. And one of our key takeaways from our time spent in East Africa was that, you know, the kind of model of Westerners doing things for people in developing nations and then leaving does not work, doesn't stick, no buy in, Yes, you know, and it's a similar thing with welfare. I think I'm going to be pretty controversially in saying that, but I just I believe that
you've got to have skin in the game. And so from the start, the model was always that we would community members with the skills, tools, resources funding that they need to be able to build and run schools for themselves.
And I guess you had to build a lot of relationships. I'm thinking about over there, you needed to develop trust and respect and rapport and relationships with the people who live there. And I guess the community leaders slash politicians slash education I don't know. Like to me, there seems like a myriad of fucking variables that you need to negotiate. If I get too technical at any time, just let
me know about I'll wind it back, you know. But that like developing all those relationships and the conduit that you needed to do, that pathway between you and I guess the decision makers or the enablers and facilitators on the other side of the world, that must have been an ever present challenge.
Yeah, oh, so many layers, like learning to understand the layers they'n navigating through them. They've got kind of like a sort of similar structure of government that we have, you know, and corruptions rife. I'm a female, which you
know is particularly fifteen sixteen years ago when I first started. Yes, you know, females don't have a place at the table when it comes to business, So you know, there was all of that, and then on top of that, it was also kind of then we identified very poor communities that we wanted to operate in, and by nature of their poverty or vulnerability, the issues were so multi dimensional.
So you've got you.
Know, not just kind of a lack of education, but a lack of healthcare, deep set issues around domestic abuse, You've got alcoholism, you have you know, women having multiple children,
unwanted potentially being forced into unwanted marriages. You know, a huge number of issues, and you know, so navigating the politics but also then I guess this solution for the complexity of the issue was really challenging but also kind of exciting at the same time, because every time we unlocked a relationship with a certain level of government, we
felt like we were getting closer. And then once we got into the community, a lot of the issues are relatively simple to solve for, you know, fields coming down with typhoid. Let's put in deep set boreholes to provide the whole community with access to clean water for free. You know, some of them are quite simple to solve for.
Others have taken a long time. You know, things like gender equity and domestic abuse, systemic issues that are going to take a long time for mindset to shift around Wow, this.
Is much bigger than just classroom education. Right. Yeah, that's just like because I was just thinking schools, kids education, but this is really a community, you know, this is much bigger. This is all the intero family, cultural you know, all of that, that bigger picture, that macro, not just the micro stuff.
Right.
Yeah. And we didn't we definitely didn't know or anticipate that because I think, you know, we thought to ourselves, oh, we'll just do a few schools. But then what you actually realize is that if a child isn't healthy physically
or mentally, yes, they can't learn. So it doesn't really matter how they're you know, if they're in the classroom, if they're being beaten up at home, they're starving, they're drinking bad water, their health is bad, you know, and then on top of that, you've got the family situation. So you know, once we started, we open the schools, the kids are coming to starving. We put in feeding programs. They were missing days of school due to illness, so
then we put in healthcare clinics. And then they would go home and start to teach their parents how to read and write. Wow, And their parents would come back in and say we want to learn too, So you know, it became this sort of holistic community development center that started to completely shift the way the fabric of the community looked. And even just by nature of bringing teachers into the community and providing them accommodation on site, the
community members were sitting up straighter. You know, kids who otherwise would have never had a dream. Their dream was to dig, you know, on the field, to grow the food that they were going to use to feed themselves that night, and now dreaming of becoming pilots and doctors. That was just so far from you know, the realms of possibility for any of these young people, and now you kind of see worlds just opening up. So yeah, it really really complex but incredible. At the same time, I know.
It's much bigger than you, and I know you're going to be self deprecating and evasive because that's you, right, But do you ever go, fucking hell, I've done well, I've done a good jo and I know it's not about you, But do you ever go I'm pretty good, I've done a good job. Not really.
It's like, you know, during COVID, I didn't I couldn't get over there for a couple of years and I had my first daughter, and so there was just this hiatus, and I thought, this is going to really kind of test the model, because you know, it's been always locals leading it, running it, executing on the plans, and we can't get over there. So it's kind of going to live or die. And it really lived like it kind
of didn't just survive, it thrived. And then so there was just this break in time where I've been so used to like spending, you know, going over four or five times a year, spending you know, a month at a time over there, and then I kind of.
Didn't go there.
And so when I did go back, Oh, it just hit me in the face. You know, it was one of the only times where you know, it's just been so long and you're just like, oh gosh, I'd forgotten what this feels like. To see what true transformation looks like and to just see how much hope there is here in otherwise quite broken community. So yeah, it really cool.
So why do you do it? Ah?
It?
You know, it's hard to even grasp anymore because I think it's morphed in so many ways.
I love a challenge, and.
I think it's the epitome of an ever moving challenge. Every stage of the organizations life cycle has challenged me in different ways. But I think it's equally married with being able to see a really tangible impact in that you know, you've got children who perhaps couldn't look you in the eye, were riddled with illness, stunted due to malnutrition,
unable to kind of participate. To see them come into a system where they're fully nurtured and grown as humans, not just like academically, almost kind of become like a butterfly, that's the most remarkable gift, most remarkable gift, and it will never get old for me. I don't think so. I think that's the key driver, is just unlocking potential. Yeah, there's nothing like it.
And how many people, like how many people are on your team? I guess as people who are full timers and part timers and volunteer You like, how does that work? How many people are involved in making this happen?
Yeah? Globally probably one hundred and fifty Wow, I would say the line shairs obviously in Africa, so I've got about one hundred and forty over there. So they're everything from builders, cooks, cleaners, maintenance, security, teachers, managers, you know, ground staff, ag et cetera. And then in Australia a very lean team we're about seven, but then we've got probably another kind of ten odd volunteers and we do
anything from kind of marketing, fundraising, strategy, impact evaluation. Yeah, getting the word out there about the work that we do.
How did you go mentally and emotionally in that downtime because everyone, you know, we all have spoken about COVID and my you know, we were talking about corporate speaking before we went live, and I literally I wanted to say how much. But in the matter, in a matter of two or three weeks, I lost a year's worth of income of bookings and you're like, oh, this is okay, So this is a new reality. And everybody, you know, and I got off lightly like a lot of people were,
you know, the businesses closed, they were fucked. But what about you where you couldn't go and be where you wanted to be, You couldn't do you couldn't do it in the way that you've been doing it. How did you navigate personally? Forget the organization for a moment, but how did you cope? You work aholic. You over it? You fucking I love it. I'll rest when I'm dead. How did you go with that?
That was my time to shine because I love it. I love a crisis, right, So we had our black tied gullible coming out. We hosted ball every year that raises the majority of the operational funds for the EU, so it does anywhere from kind of one to two and a half million dollars in one night, and of course that's an in person event, so we had to
cancel that. So, you know, that was terrifying because we were looking down the barrel of kind of fifty percent class of our annual budget just with a line through it, and then equally having to kind of just then strategize for like, well, okay, if we don't have this, then what what are we going to do? So lots of
lots of phone calls and kind of chaos. But then in the personal side, I guess it was just, yeah, workaholic, so making sure that because work became at home not in the office, that I didn't just kind of work, you know, sixteen hours a day because I could do that out of my bedroom rather than you know, having I guess a different physical premise. And then the other complex challenge we were navigating was we just can't just
switch to a virtual classroom. Our kids come from mud huts without access to electricity and let alone you know, kind of jumping onto Google classrooms. So there was a whole operational challenge of kind of how do we keep the kids in the system, particularly knowing that girls particularly are at risk of falling into unwanted you know, marriages
and pregnancies. And so we were really driven and motivated by, Okay, what's it going to take for us to be able to legally work within the confines of the rules of what the Ministry of Education were telling us to do in Uganda, but also still serving the needs of the
of the children and their families. So quite quickly managed to kind of you know, we love the word pivot, but pivot our operation and I'm talking you know, hard copy handouts and working in small group outdoor learning environments, still continuing to feed the children, redeploying staff upskilling and training them, using the opportunity to do a lot of
maintenance on the schools. We built a boarding facility for six hundred high school students during that time because construction was still allowed, so just like, how are we going to keep everybody on the tools because we don't you know, there's no job saver or whatever it was called that we were getting if we weren't paying them. The new Gan and Team were, you know, sort of there was no backstop. But that was exciting for me, you know, once the shock, I was actually in Uganda up until
I think it was the twentieth of March. I got on the last flight out. I didn't reconcile how bad things were because I wasn't here when all the meat got taken off the supermarket shelves and everybody started toilet holding toilet paper. But I brought got a twelve pack back from U Gander in my suitcase, so I was sweet. The pew tickets, you've got to ration them exactly.
How do you decide, like, how do you decide moving forward? Because there must be so many needs, right, It's not like, oh we've got everything covered now, it's good, So moving forward, how do you decide what your focus is going to be, where the money is going to go, because I guess your objective is not to be in a holding pattern, but to grow and meet more needs and do more things right, to expand and improve and you know, serve
on a greater level. How do you decide what gets your focus and what gets your.
Dough Yeah, great question and one that's like a constant interrogation. But I mean when i've kind of soul searched, which is usually I've now got too young daughters, and I feel like.
The time that I've had kind.
Of at three and breastfeeding awake, feeling very alone in the middle ofthon itis, when I kind of ponder these really tricky issues, I think, you know, what gets us out of bed is serving communities that otherwise nobody else would or could serve. So we're talking about kind of extreme poverty environments and taking them from nothing to something, and so ideally we're not there forever. In the years that we've worked with the two communities that we're working in,
there's been just a huge shift. They've started to be able to chip in for you know, there's always been an expectation that they will chip in for their school fees, but they've started to chip in in a more substantial way, which means that we can start to kind of look for other communities to work in so, I suppose the best way of putting it is we look for last mile communities where others can't and won't build schools, and we use that as so, you know, go for the
poorest and have a really good cracket at changing their trajectory through these essentially education centers.
I guess. I mean ultimately you want them to be self sustaining and independent and you know, so that they can just continue what you know, you lit the fuse on, you threw the petrol on the fire, and hopefully they can keep that metaphoric fire burning. I want to know, tell me a little bit about your mum and dad, because I'm trying to figure something out about you. Give me a snapshot of mum and dad.
Workaholics, self made. Dad inherited a big family mess when his father passed away quite early from melanoma. He had, you know, a farm that he had quite he'd been drinking prior to passing away and there was a lot of debt attached to it. He also was driven by the fact that his mum had polio and had been diagnosed with polio since the age of nine, so some
quite a lot of mobility issues. So he was kind of pulled back to the farm where I guess the question was does he kind of sell up and break even then walk away or does he make something of it? And he's quite entrepreneurial, so he sort of made something of it, and you know, continues to work from four am to eight pm every day, you know, age sixty eight, and says that he will die doing it, which I.
Think, come on, dad, have a breather, old mate. Exactly.
And then the education side is mum forty plus years as a teacher. She was my teacher at primary and high school. Come from quite small communities of education, and so you know, she's just incredible educator and and and instilled in me that that passion and for what a gift education is. She's recently retired and is giving me a lot of help with my young family, which is amazing. Enables me to be able to keep doing what I do.
And also she serves or could serve I guess as a free advisor in the academic space. Absolutely absolutely exactly what and what a mum and dad think of you know, what you've built. So I'm sure they're proud and all of that, but what what do they were they when you came back and went, Okay, here's my idea. Did they roll their eyes or did they go of course, that's why are you little?
You know?
I look, it was a feud for a few years.
You know, I was I was studying to be a lawyer, and you know, I was the A grade kid that was going to be a lawyer. And then I went to Africa and I came back and said that I was going to build some schools, and so that was kind of terrifying, which I now understand now that I've become a mom myself. I get it like that's kind of every parent's worst nightmare because you're just going, well, that's you know, all you ever hear about him. The news is bad stuff about Africa. You don't hear any
of the amazing stuff. And so I came back and they were just kind of mortified. But I guess they thought it was probably going to be a phase and that it wouldn't get up off the ground anyway. So they went along for a bit, and then I remember when they came over three years into the journey, when we finished the first school, and I thought Dad was going to pass out, like he was just crying, you know, and just you know, just could not believe it. And you know, he is our biggest they both are our
biggest advocates. So yeah, it's been a journey, but mostly just because I think, you know, it's a pretty weird thing to kind of come home and say, when you've grown up on a sheep and cattle farming country New South Wales.
I think I have nowhere near the experience and I've had nowhere near the exposure that you have. But I went I went to South Africa a long time ago for a while to do some work with a charity, and so it was nine and ninety nine, right, but I was there for over a month, and I was working with kids who are HIV positive and also you know, and a real lot of issues. And I did compared
to what you do, I didn't do anything. I just helped out a bit, right, But for me, it was like you know, people go, oh, it was life changing, it was transformative and all of that, but there's some shit that you can't really understand unless you see it, and unless you're you can even see videos and footage and you can hear conversations. But I felt like the most privileged, spoilt, delfish, fucking human. When I got over there and I went, Okay, I have absolutely no problems.
My life is Hollywood I have you know, for me, it just gave me. And I know this is an obvious and cliche thing to say, but Annabella gave me just like a perspective that I couldn't have had, Like it wouldn't matter how many stories you told me, how many pictures, how many videos, you know, Like I worked at a few different places, but I worked at a place for a week called Acres of Love, and basically
it was just this four bedroom house. And in this four bedroom house there were four bunk beds and sixteen kids and they're all HIV positive and there was a twenty four hour staff rotation. And literally from the moment that I got there, they're like, here's a bottle feed, these kids, do that clean that wash that go out there, like nobody's special except the kids. And You're like, yeah,
it just for me, I think. And if you experienced that, like with people that come over like your mom and dad, obviously it was life changing or at least paradigm shifting. Is that true most people?
Yeah, I don't think anyone gets out unscathed. And we started a parent child Troop a few years ago because of that exact experience, I guess, and me thinking to myself, I would love students to feel this when they're in their education journey and thinking about what their own kind of careers and pathways look like, yes, rather than kind of experiencing it, you know, midway through UNI or whatever where you can still you know, you can still pursue
a certain pathway. But I think that jolted me so much, and like you say, you can't unsee it, you can't unfeel it, and you know, it doesn't ness sssarily mean that everyone's going to go away and start an organization and do something. But it's more just like you say, it's just this most deep wake up call that we're just so lucky and just to be so grateful for what we have and so yeah, to provide out other people that opportunity became a prerogative for.
Me as well.
And I do believe that it's created a good impact for other people, you know, in Australia to think about how they can do something for other people. You know, whatever it is, it doesn't matter what it is it's just do something. Yeah, use what you have to make a different I went to.
This place called I think it was called Door of Hope as well, and it was like this whole facility. And anyway, while I was there, this alarm went and I said to this this gorgeous lady who was like carrying around fucking three kids, you know, I go and this alarm goes, and all of these people it's like battle stations. All of these people kind of run and I'm like, what's going on? And so this is almost this is hard to believe. But so this was in
joe Burg. And so the front of the place that the wall was about I don't know, eight feet high, and on top of the wall was razor wire. Right. But in the middle of this big brick wall is essentially like a steel door about like a galvanized iron door about this wide, so about a meter wide and about six hundred mil high, and inside was like a little crib. So what would happen is these young women who would get pregnant through through no desire to be pregnant.
Let's just leave it at that. They would they they some of them were just discarding these babies and so they built this thing where these newborn babies would would be put inside this little crib and it would set off an alarm and they would and I'm like, what's going on? Then they brought in this brand new baby. I'm like that, I'm I'm and everyone's just running around doing all the practical shit they need to do. I was, I'm like, where am I like? What is? How is
this happening? Like where you go? I don't know anything. I am an idiot. And I was crying. I was crying. I was I was a mess. I was a mess. I was thinking about this child's life, and I was thinking about the poor mum, and I was thinking about how is this happening in you know? Anyway? It is? The need is vast, and it's not it's not diminishing.
I wanted to know. This is maybe a weird question, but like a lot of people who are a percentage of people who work in similar spaces to you, they're linked to a religious organization or I'm not going to ask you if you're religious, but is there any kind of spiritual guiding force in your life? Or are you just really pragmatic and practical and you're like No, I'm just doing it because or is there you know, we need to feed kids, educate kids, and make lives better.
And I know that on that on a level, you're very practical and strategic. But is there something else as well? No?
Not, not really. I went to a high school that really deeply valued service, no religious affiliation, and I'm not religious myself, and nor is schoolful life.
But I think that probably helps in a way, maybe definitely.
And you know, we've been really, we've been really you know, quite clear and adamant about not being religious and taking kids from any religion or no religion, you know, so that's kind of a core part of why also why we actually started something rather than joined forces with something
that already existed. But you know, just this idea of service above self with such a huge part of my high school kind of I guess motto or values, and it just taught me from such a young age that you give, sorry, that you get so much more than you give when you help others. And yeah, so I guess that's that's it. Really, there's not I wish there was sort of some kind of Buddhist or whatever.
Well, I reckon your philosophy is loving, kindness and service, right, I mean absolutely, and give what you can.
You know, it doesn't matter what that is, but you know, and I can promise you get you know, tenfold in return. And so and also I suppose also just the opportunity to create community. I love how connected people become to something like this, and that's really inspiring to be a part of because I think you find really like minded people who were driven by this similar kind of purpose and passions. So that's probably kept me going as well.
I'm always I'm always paying attention to guests and thinking about what I'm going to call the show, what I'm going to call this episode, And so I now know that this episode is going to be called service above self. So thank you for that. Thank you for because sometimes I get off and I'm just going to come up
with it myself. This is also a hard question. We'll wind it up because you've been very gracious with your time, but how how apart from the fact that you've gotten older and wiser and had lots of experiences, how are you different from the twenty year old vision of you or you know, pre Uganda. But how do you think you are? You know, if you had have taken the lawyer path and done. How do you think you're a different human being to you know, the sliding door Annabelle
that would have gone left instead of right. I know that's a hypothetic. Well I know it's a hypothetical, but it's like like, for example, when I was in my early twenties, I went, fuck, I don't want a job. I want to work for me. So I haven't had a job for over three and a half decades, right, So, but I could you know, I think, Wow, if I had have said, well, I'm just going to work for someone, my life would have been very different. But I literally haven't had a boss for three and a half decades.
But I could kind of guess how it would have gone. What about you do?
You know what, because I'm a fucking terrible employee, I'll be in jail and I look, there's been like dark moments where I'm just you know, at the edge of burnout and just going like why I can't like, maybe I'll just go get a job and I'd probably be paid three times as much and have to work kind of you know, a temp is hard, but there's just no way, Like I just I think the character and the resilience that it's built in me to solve the things.
That are just so far outside the realms of kind of what's expected has really made, you know, a huge impact on me. And then I think, as I kind of have mentioned a couple of times throughout this, it's a life that I've built. It's not a career or a job. It's everything.
You know.
My friends are around it, my family is involved in it. I've got my you know, my daughters are in you going to be involved in it. It's a rich kind of tapestry of opportunity and and I've got this kind of whole other world in Uganda, Like I got married over there. They put on a surprise wedding for us, you know, like it's just there's just the richness of it is just so immense. I just can't imagine not having that and kind of doing a job that paid the bills and was nothing more.
Do they there's a dumb question, of course they do. But are you embraced by the community. Do they love you? Do they have a name for you.
Like they have a special like yeah, my mama Anna. Yeah, definitely embraced. I try and stay in the background, though I really don't want to be, you know, mother kind of hair over there. Like again, it's about empowering them to be their own heroes for themselves, and so I think ideally I'm lifting from underneath as much as I can, and I've always tried to be quite intentional about that. So I hope that that's the way that I'm seeing.
But in returning after COVID, there was a big hurrah, and I mean that was just just blew my mind. So we've got the documentary actually is being released on SBS on demand this week, so you can hop on and see that. It's called Seeds Planting Hopes through Education and you can see kind of more of that. Just how incredibly special the communities are.
Have you ever heard of a dude called Justin Wren. No, so Justin Wren. I had on the show now Justin Wren yep, so Justin with a W with a w Wren. Justin Wren. So Justin Wren. Is was a UFC fight up so in the UFC and he he had a real moment like you in in Uganda with I think they're called thet Theti pygmies. Yeah, so he built all these Wells in Uganda and it's called Fight for the Forgot, Fight for the Forgotten. Okay, fight for the Forgotten. And we had him on and he's just a beautiful human.
I love him. I fucking love him. He's such a and he was like his life was a bit shit. He was a you know, like a world level MMA fighter in the UFC. Like his life was going shit, and he went to he went to Uganda. I can't remember why he was there, and he met all these pigmies and they just embraced him. And now he spends half his life there and he's had bloody what's that disease you get from the water, what do you call it? Ophoid malaria? Like ten times? And you know he's you know,
he's always but yeah, like reminds me. You two remind me of each other. Just just that people doing awesome things for people in need.
Thank you. I'm going to look him up. I'm going to listen to his podcast.
Check him out, check him out. All right, how do we help? How do we help point us in the right direction? Yeah, just jump on jump on our website.
It's called School for Life dot org dot au. You can provide a child with a scholarship, or you can sign up to get our newsletters. Everything makes a difference, so and we do lots of events throughout the year, so get involved.
You're the best, You're the best. Thank you, no, thank you for having me. Ah amazing, amazing. Annabelle will say goodbye, affair, but thank you so much. Congratulations on what you're doing. I know you don't want any of that bullshit, but fuck it, I'm giving it to you. Thanks great, congrats to you and your team, and thank you so much for being generous with us but also generous with the people that you're serving. It's beautiful. Appreciate at you my pleasure. Thank you