Page 8 - BOSS Today Issue 10

Comic Relief

All surplus

is needed

for Africa

Angela Rippon tells BOSS Today why BOSS members should get
involved in sending surplus stock to schools in Africa and elsewhere

ffice supply companies said, “but the salaries there are
Owho want to get incredibly low. I think a daily
involved in helping the BOSS salary in Kibera is £2 a day. So
Federation and Comic Relief offering them free notebooks
stalwart Angela Rippon will make a huge amount
supply stationery to schools in of difference. Education for
developing countries should these children can be really
never think their products will life changing – it can get them
be surplus to requirements, the out of the slum or at least
former newsreader has said. to somewhere that is more
Speaking to BOSS Today, comfortable.”
Rippon said: “It doesn’t matter She said the way the children
how much you think the goods were taught often meant they
are surplus. They will really used more stationery than might
make a difference in driving be usual in a British class. “They
education.” write a lot more down,” she said,
Rippon, who taught at “so they tend to go through a
a school in the Kibera slum lot of notebooks. There is not as
outside Nairobi in Kenya as part much free flowing discussion
of this year’s BBC Comic Relief as there might be in a Western
appeal, said the joint venture school.
to supply stationery was really “They get homework to do
crucial because the parents of every night, and with the family
children in such areas often I stayed with when I lived in
had to pay for both the school the slum for a week the little
itself and school equipment, girl would come back every
and often could not afford it. night and work by the light of a
“Parents want to send kerosene lamp. It makes you very, Rippon in the Kibera school
their children to school,” she very humble to think the things

8 BOSS TODAY | November/December 2011

Boss p6-p9.indd 4 15/11/2011 12:24