The
company ethos set by Towergate Executive Chairman, Peter Cullum, is
to make money, have fun, do good.
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So when Towergate Partnership won the
Sunday Times’ Management Team of the Year 2008 and Peter Cullum met
Sir Richard Branson, Peter made a significant personal donation to
the Virgin Unite Foundation’s work on HIV/Aids in South Africa.
Peter also agreed to join Sir Richard and a small party of
entrepreneurs on a fact-finding trip..
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Six Days that
changed my world
Peter Cullum, accompanied by his wife, Ann,
set off for South Africa with little idea of what to expect from
the six-day journey. They knew only that they’d be staying at
Richard Branson’s private game reserve and visiting a number of
locations where the Virgin charity has been active. The party
included a number of successful entrepreneurs including Mark
Christophers, co-founder of the West Cornwall Pasty Company, Sean
Phelan who launched Multimap.com and Danny Pang of the private
equity business, PEM Group.
The team of entrepreneurs were introduced
to the newly appointed South African Health Minister, Barbara
Hogan. Her arrival on the scene is viewed, by Richard Branson and
others, as striking a completely new tone in the country’s battle
against HIV/Aids. She was, incidentally, one of a number of white
South Africans that were jailed alongside Nelson Mandela and served
an 11-year sentence under the apartheid regime.
…becoming personally involved in
these initiatives
On the second day the team visited the
nearby Bhubezi Clinic, which handles over 200 patients a day, most
of them with virtually no local access to healthcare. The
clinic, which Virgin Unite helped to fund, specialises in HIV/Aids,
TB and malaria and the queues outside of 300 to 400 chronically
sick people was testimony to the scale of the problem they face.
But screening and treatment has already saved many hundreds of
lives and the plan is to replicate the successful model in other
rural areas. So horror at the suffering is tinged with hope that
funding and proper intervention is beginning to counter the
dreadful Aids pandemic. Not surprisingly Sir Richard has attained
the status of local hero for galvanising the energy of his Virgin
team and becoming personally involved in these
initiatives.
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Another project visited was the
Silaule Orphan houses. As well as losing their parents to
HIV/Aids, children are also often made homeless and destitute. To
date Virgin Unite have been involved in building eight new homes in
a programme which allows the local community to care for its own
children and avoid them being shipped off to far-away institutions.
The highlight of the visit for the children was simply the arrival
of a new DVD player, which brought unimaginable
excitement. |
The next trip for the team was to a food
garden created in the grounds of one of the large community
schools. This initiative, in partnership with a local NGO,
plans to put fresh organic produce on the tables of impoverished
families, whilst teaching people how to grow their own food
sustainably. Fresh vegetables will be grown for school meals with
any surplus being sold to the local community to provide an income
for the ladies who turn the fields into a harvest. Fruit trees were
planted to mark the visit.
Next day the team travelled back to
Johannesburg and visited a Ladies’ Aids Ministry run by the
remarkable Mama Carol. Her own harrowing story has only
served to spur her on in her work to provide vocational skills
training to young people affected by HIV/Aids. The
presentations given by a number of teenagers showed how, in
developing their own skills, they can help also to rehabilitate
younger children who have suffered the traumas of watching their
families die.
Peter Cullum and his colleagues also saw a
gym created in the Alexandra Township in Soweto by Tumi Masite
whose ambition is to create a place where children can improve
their health and well-being and avoid the dangers of drugs. The gym
now has 800 members and has become a real inspiration to the local
community. Tumi is now working on a range of ideas to franchise his
successful project.
…focus on building a sustainable
economy leading towards much greater financial
independence
The centrepiece of the visit to
Johannesburg was a tour of the Richard Branson School of
Entrepreneurship. The school was created to stimulate activity,
desperately needed to create future economic growth and jobs. The
focus is on building a sustainable economy leading towards much
greater financial independence. The school, which opened in 2006,
gives students an intensive 18-month training programme as a follow
up to a BA in Business Administration from CIDA, South Africa’s
first virtually-free college for business studies.
At the School Peter witnessed a ‘Dragons
Den’ competition in which he was one of the judges. The young
winner received a funding contribution for his project from Virgin
Unite and then Richard Branson and Danny Pang stepped in with
funding for all the finalists. Peter agreed earlier to support two
of the students through a two-week summer school at Cass Business
School in London. The joy of the students at their achievements
would have melted the coldest heart.
The end of the trip brought a welter of
emotions for Peter and his fellow entrepreneurs: sadness, guilt,
anger but also a powerful sense that poor black South Africans are
full of hope and, with the right kind of support, they are
determined to turn their world around. Before leaving the team all
agreed to meet back in the UK to create a major programme to
support further these brilliant initiatives.
Peter Cullum said: “Whatever
happens, the experience will remain with me for the rest of my
life.”
