The Penny Project
Budget: $1,500 – $3,000 AUD
My wife has begun to pare back her commitment to the 2 great causes of her life. She was one of 4 women from 4 continents who worked together to establish Down Syndrome International, DSI, now based in the UK.
She also founded and developed the Australian Independent School in Jakarta, Indonesia. Formerly the Australian International School, AIS, the school has 3 campuses (2 in Jakarta and 1 in Denpasar, Bali) which deliver International Baccalaureate curriculum, and in the academic year just gone, 10% of the students from the Jakarta senior campus achieved the maximum 45/45 which represents an astonishing result for a school teaching a European curriculum in an Asian jurisdiction.
Penny's commitment to education and disability is driven by the fact that our daughter, now 40 y.o., has Down Syndrome and her educational and physical development have driven both of Penny's lifelong projects.
My ambition is to have an impartial observer conduct interviews with Penny's fellow-travellers, most of whom are already in retirement, in order to construct a frank and fair record of Penny's astonishing life of successfully enriching the lives of thousands of students and young people with Down Syndrome.
The joy of the project will lie mostly in the enthusiasm of those who have collaborated in the establishment and development of DSI and AIS and the warmth of the relationships which Penny has built with her friends and collaborators, and in the extraordinary penchant which Penny has developed for slipping on black-ice and crashing a succession of bicycles into stationary objects including our front gate (from both directions), a median strip (one direction only) and a bridge (on a coastal bike-path).
I have written several books myself, but I would like this project to be 'hands-off' for me because it deserves to be constructed by a younger and more lateral author than I could ever be.
My role, as I envisage it, will be to provide historical background information from the past 50+ years of our lives together and to tee-up interviews between the author and the many people who have variously assisted or resisted Penny's mission as she envisaged, planned and developed the two major life tasks to which her life has been committed.
She also founded and developed the Australian Independent School in Jakarta, Indonesia. Formerly the Australian International School, AIS, the school has 3 campuses (2 in Jakarta and 1 in Denpasar, Bali) which deliver International Baccalaureate curriculum, and in the academic year just gone, 10% of the students from the Jakarta senior campus achieved the maximum 45/45 which represents an astonishing result for a school teaching a European curriculum in an Asian jurisdiction.
Penny's commitment to education and disability is driven by the fact that our daughter, now 40 y.o., has Down Syndrome and her educational and physical development have driven both of Penny's lifelong projects.
My ambition is to have an impartial observer conduct interviews with Penny's fellow-travellers, most of whom are already in retirement, in order to construct a frank and fair record of Penny's astonishing life of successfully enriching the lives of thousands of students and young people with Down Syndrome.
The joy of the project will lie mostly in the enthusiasm of those who have collaborated in the establishment and development of DSI and AIS and the warmth of the relationships which Penny has built with her friends and collaborators, and in the extraordinary penchant which Penny has developed for slipping on black-ice and crashing a succession of bicycles into stationary objects including our front gate (from both directions), a median strip (one direction only) and a bridge (on a coastal bike-path).
I have written several books myself, but I would like this project to be 'hands-off' for me because it deserves to be constructed by a younger and more lateral author than I could ever be.
My role, as I envisage it, will be to provide historical background information from the past 50+ years of our lives together and to tee-up interviews between the author and the many people who have variously assisted or resisted Penny's mission as she envisaged, planned and developed the two major life tasks to which her life has been committed.
Related categories:
Interviewing