Hearing Taddy Blecher talk leaves you with a chronic itch. I met him a few weeks back. Not a day has passed since without his story dive-bombing my conscience.
Blecher, who is kind and implacably modest, would, I'm sure, not wish to cause discomfort to anyone. But his is a story you cannot digest impassively.
Taddy Blecher places what most of us do to try and make a difference into mocking relief.
A crude summary:
- About to leave South Africa for less complicated pastures, Blecher, a top actuary, had a last minute change of heart. Cancelling his flights, unpacking his bags, he stayed, and went to visit a township - to which he had never before ventured.
- He soon became MD of an organisation teaching meditation in deprived schools. Unsurprisingly, this unlikely approach to building an educational foundation met with some resistance. Blecher tells of one astonished school official who put his foot down. Already, the man explained, no one did anything at his school. He was not about to allow Blecher to teach them how to close their eyes and do nothing, better. (In the room of venture capitalists, where I listened to Blecher, this subject also drew one or two complicated looks and lunges for Blackberrys.)
- Then, in 2000, Blecher created South Africa’s first free university. He had no building, no teachers - just an idea he knew the country was hungry for. Using his work fax machine, he sent out invitations to several hundred schools. Thousands of replies poured in. Prospective students thronged the street outside the offices of the company Blecher worked for, admiring what they took for the shiny new university.
- The market test unequivocal, and with just weeks to spare before opening, Blecher found a dilapidated building. The first students were taught to type on photostats of keyboards.
- Years on, CIDA, the university, has been a phenomenal success. It has a very high employment rate. Students must also teach children back in their villages during holidays, so its effects are far-reaching. CIDA has won the support of top corporate partners. These include Virgin, Blecher a co-founder of the Branson School of Entrepreneurship. This school provides a training programme for CIDA graduates to start businesses.
And now? Settle back? Not a man who wakes at 5am and meditates for two hours before starting the day.
Now, Blecher, together with his lovely wife Annie and others, are pioneering a much more scalable model. To do this they have creatied the wonderfully named Invincible Outsourcing. Students will work for for the organisation to help fund their business courses – answering calls to begin with, later taking up roles in different departments such as marketing, thus gaining a practical business case study as well as a source of funding.
Invincible Outsourcing needs clients, computers and more people to know about them.
Hopefully you'll itch a little too.