Bright side of Black Monday: Sophia Swire gave up a high-flying career in the City of London for the sake of illiterate children in Asia

For A Change, Dec-Jan, 1998 by Michael Smith

The needs are enormous. One hundred and thirty million children worldwide receive no primary education--77 million of them girls. The vast majority of the world's 800 million illiterate adults are women. Illiteracy in Asia is worse than in sub-Saharan Africa, and in some areas of rural Pakistan only two per cent of women are literate. Yet a 1993 World Bank report said that education for girls is one of the most rewarding investments a nation can make. `After all,' says Swire, `as well as improving their social and economic status, literacy gives the girls more access to other development messages such as primary health care, or birth control. Basic education means they don't drink infected water; they look after their siblings better; it changes their aspirations.'

It also changes the values of the men. At first the mullahs in particular suspected that Swire and her colleagues were spies or Christian fundamentalists with a hidden agenda of conversion. `Nothing could be further from the truth,' asserts Swire, who says that this is one reason why LFL works in association with Pakistani bodies, particularly the National Rural Support Programme. Now, the mullahs are putting their own children into the schools and are encouraged to be on the schools' management boards. `Then,' says Swire, `the mullahs re-read the Qur'an and see that Mohammed did recommend education for girls as well as boys!'

Swire says she finds it profoundly humbling to visit the schools which have benefited. It is one of the most exciting things to see how a tiny school which costs us approximately [pounds sterling] 250 a year is changing the values of whole communities. Some children will go back to work in the fields. That's understood. But at least they will be able to read their street signs; to vote in a more mature and responsible way; to be less vulnerable to the feudal landlords who want to buy their votes. They will be more conscious and intelligent about their choices.'

Swire emphasizes that, being small and flexible, Learning For Life is able to respond to the needs of communities at a grassroots level. `Working in partnership with local non-governmental organizations and individual village communities is the secret,' she says. `We are trying to build these infrastructures because we strongly believe that we shouldn't be around for ever. We don't want to build a dependency.'

But whenever she personally has thought of bowing out she has had `strong messages from whatever it is up there that looks after us that I have to stay on this path'.

Once, when she was contemplating resigning from LFL's board of trustees, of which she is Chair--`to focus on becoming a multi-millionaire'--she visited Saks department store in Washington DC, to sell her Pashmina-Cashmere shawls to the buyer (another business she runs on the side). In the window display `between a chic pair of gloves and the dark glasses' she saw `a scrumpled old newspaper with the banner headline "Learning for life". A chill rose through my body and I thought okay, whoever you are up there ruling my life, I get the message.'