Third Day Cape Town-Amy Biehl Foundation-2/20/09

On Friday I did a service project for my Non-Profit Marketing class, it was the Amy Biehl Foundation.  Amy Biehl for those of you who don't know (and for my future reference later) was an American student from Stanford University but  studying at the University of the Western Cape as a Fulbright Scholar in 1993.  One day, 2 of her black friends called her and said they needed a ride and asked her is she could pick them up, she said of course.   As she headed to the Guguletu Township where they were, she came across an Anti-Apartheid rally.  Since she was a white girl in a black neighborhood and driving through an Anti-Apartheid rally they assumed she was hostile even though she was in fact an Anti-Apartheid Activist.  Rocks and bricks were thrown through her car and she was eventually dragged out of the car and then stoned and stabbed to death.  There were four men who were convicted of Amy Biehl's murder and sentenced to 18 years in prison.  When the new black government came to power there was something called the Truth and Reconciliation Committee headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and it was set up to pardon people who were serving jail time for acts they committed against the Apartheid.  These four killers applied to be pardoned and were granted approval by Amy Biehl's family for their release.  Amy Biehl's parents determined that the acts committed by these four people was not out of hatred for their daughter whom the killers did not even know, it was out of hatred for the Apartheid.  Her parents not only allowed their release from prison but completely embraced 2 of them and consider them family.  This shocked the world that her parents could forgive their daughters killers and even be in the same room as them.  Her parents help the killers set up non-profit organizations of their own and one, "Easy" is employed by the Amy Biehl Foundation and was our tour guide!

Our day started off at the Amy Biehl Foundation Headquarters which was in an officer building in District Six (I think).  We met everyone who worked in the office including the Director of the Foundation.  He talked to us about Amy Biehl and the history of the foundation.  We were then taken to the site where Amy Biehl was killed and there is a small memorial there in her remembrance.  Our first stop was the "Sokhanyo Secondary School" where we were shown a greenhouse that was donated to the foundation to teach kids how to farm.  There was a gardener there who was very passionate about his job and had been tending to the garden for several years and was very proud of the smallest plants, even though they looked like weeds to us.  We then went into some of the classrooms and met many kids attending the school.  They were very excited to see us and we were equally excited to hang out with them.  They all wanted their photos taken and us to give them our "autographs."  It was then time to leave and we went to a community center where a local group of students had prepared both a singing and dancing performance for our viewing.  They were very talented kids and were given the opportunity to dance and sing instead of be on the street because of the Amy Biehl Foundation.  From there we went to a field hockey clinic run by "Easy" and there was a Professional Dutch Field Hockey team (AMHC Pinoke) in town teaching the kids there how to play field hockey.  The kids there had never played field hockey in there lives and there was about 250 of them.  The professional field hockey teach brought with them hundreds of sticks and other equipment as donations to the Amy Biehl Foundation and their after school programs. 

That night we had tickets to go to a Vodafone Stormers Rugby Game.  Myself, Phil, Nicole, Amanda and one of their friends all had tickets to the game, a sport none of us knew nothing about.  It was pretty interesting despite us not having any clue what was going on.  After the game we went to dinner at an Italian restaurant near the ship and went to bed after that as we had been running on fumes the past few days and wanted to hike Table Mountain in the morning.