Celebrating Five Years with Educating The Future

It’s been five years since Alessandro Piovano and I co-founded Educating The Future, six years since our 800 km walk from Bondi Beach to Byron Bay, and seven years since we first stepped foot in Timor-Leste in 2014.

I feel like I have grown up with Educating The Future and Timor-Leste.

By way of introduction, I am Adam Hegedus (he/him), a 23 year old first-generation Australian born in Sydney to Hungarian migrant parents and I currently call Melbourne home. My passions lie in poverty eradication, gender equality, education, and sustainability, and I am proud to work towards these goals as the co-founder and inaugural Managing Director of my for-purpose, not-for-profit organisation, Educating The Future. Our vision is to educate 30,000 children by 2030.

To start my reflection, I looked back on five-plus years of photos, videos, and documents and managed to dig up some past writing in the process, both my own and those of Alessandro. Reading these early reflections accurately grounded me in the transformative experiences that occurred so many years ago. These stories are the best place to begin.

Early reflections

“A sense of curiosity followed them down the tarmac, beside which stood an oddly placed sign; ‘Welcome to Timor-Leste’ it read in rusted lettering as we arrived after a short 50-minute plane trip from Darwin on August 7, 2014. The raw nature, diverse landscape, and earthly smells hit us instantly as we passed that sign, instilling an unnerving sense of awe that stood with us until we passed the sign again upon departure. Could you tell this early, upon the sight of two naive 16 year-olds that this moment would change their lives forever? No, you most certainly couldn’t. But this is where it all began. This is where the deepest roots of Educating The Future spawned”.

“Months had passed since our first experiences in Timor-Leste after our inaugural immersion tour with Waverley College. After our first visit, we made a promise to each other and ourselves to go back to Timor-Leste, and make a contribution for the better. This goal had been resting patiently in the forefront of our minds for a year. We desperately searched for something to keep the fire burning, to turn this spark into an unstoppable bonfire of an idea. With high school and year 12 drawing to its inevitable close, we wanted to do something big — something we’d never forget. A venture that would catch the attention of our community and raise the much-needed awareness of the role of education in alleviating poverty. We’d spent many sleepless nights brainstorming a way to have this impact and deciding on an 800 km walk from our home in Bondi Beach all the way to Byron Bay in 21 days was harder than you’d think.”

“One morning in early 2016, a few months after our body had recovered from the walk, we woke up with a heightened sense of awareness, something that spurred Adam to pronounce, “We should start a charity”. Alessandro excitedly replied, “Exactly what I was thinking”. This was something we said we were both ready to commit to for the rest of our lives. So with the initial $20,000 raised, Educating The Future was born and our founding team of five 18-year old students was established”.

Fast forward to December 2020 and the 800 kilometers of our founding walk was met with a new set of feet: those of Byron Bruce-James, who has since become a close friend of ours. As Byron ventured to the same parts of Australia’s Eastern coastline during his walk from Maroubra to Mullumbimby to raise $10,000 for our organisation, I was able to reflect on all the people, places, and seemingly impossible barriers that we have faced along the way.

Observing the transformative impacts that this 50-day walk had on Byron, it was clear that Alessandro, myself, and the over 200 volunteers who have supported Educating The Future have the same blood rushing through their veins. Five years on, it was clear that Byron like so many others stand as a symbol for young people making a positive social impact — the crux of what our organisation is founded on. He truly did “walk the talk”.

The why, how and what of Educating The Future

For those new to Educating The Future, I think it’s important to show all that we have achieved through the why, how, and what of our organisation. To start, one of the most common questions I get “Why did you start the charity?”. It’s hard to give a definitive or isolated answer. What we know for sure is that we have the resources, education, and privilege to make a difference. It was in the Railaco Motahare community we first visited that inspired us to do more with what we had. Little did we know at the time, this charity would provide many of us with endless purpose, sleepless nights, and everything in between.

Answering the question “How did you start the charity?” is infinitely easier.

The question “What does the charity do?” can be best summarised as we raise funds in Australia, primarily through events, grants, and crowdfunding, in order to empower in-need Timorese communities with the financial resources needed to build pre-schools.

The long version is that we run events, such as multiple large gala dinners and trivia nights. Our largest and most recent event was our touch rugby day in February 2021 with 1000+ attendees. This event solidified how far we’ve come in building a network of trusted supporters and donors. We’ve also been successful in crowdfunding. Amongst the likes of Byron Bruce-James, another 18 year old leader by the name of Jayden Gilby from Alice Springs raised $25,000 to build a classroom with our organisation. That’s a dollar for every person in his town! We were also lucky to have a group of 80 regular donors under the Fursday Froffers Fraternity banner to raise $30,000 towards what will be our fourth pre-school starting in 2022. High schools, corporations, community groups, and our Sydney and Melbourne communities have also been very generous with giving. All in all, we’ve raised a tad over $400,000 and counting!

Whilst we focus on building our bank balance, we also focus on our activities in Timor-Leste. Underpinning our whole program is a belief in localisation, where all discussions and program decisions are led by our Timorese people and communities. We demonstrate this by being a non-governmental organisation (NGO) partner with the Ministry of Education Timor-Leste and the local communities we work with. This multi-level relationship first involves selecting a community from a list of 40 in-need communities that urgently require pre-school infrastructure. Once we build consensus on the location, we conduct a socialisation period for three months. This involves community meetings, planning sessions, risk evaluation, and environmental, gender and disability considerations to ensure it is a sustainable, realistic and vision-aligned build.

Once all is set in stone, we start to provide a series of approximately $5000 USD payments in eight different construction phases over a period of six to eight months. As you can imagine, this has been slowed due to the impacts of COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021. All funds are securely transferred to an independent Timorese accounting corporation, which subsequently passes cash onto two pre-designated signatories from the communities School Management Committee. These are the groups in charge of the overall project and include parents, teachers, and community leaders who are both men and women. Before the next allotment of funds can be received, the School Management Committee must provide a financial acquittal which is verified by our accountants. Operating in a high-risk context means that we take our professional governance seriously and we are fortunate to be overseen by our experienced volunteer Board, Chair, and Finance, Audit and Risk Committee.

All of our pre-schools are built on public land and the education is free, forever. Each pre-school includes two large classrooms, disability-inclusive design features such as ramp, railways and large doors, and a high ceiling for insulation. Our partnership with the government means that the community receives two university-qualified and trained teachers and one head teacher, along with food for each school day. This is important as many children often struggle to eat and have the energy necessary to focus, particularly from large families. Finally, resources including the curriculum, child-accessible chairs and learning materials, are provided by the Ministry of Education, along with other NGO partners such as Alola Foundation and UNICEF Timor-Leste.

Today, it is clear that our initial promise of building one pre-school has now taken shape into something bigger — trying to build 40 over the next decade. In Timor-Leste, 8 in 10 children do not have access to an early childhood education, and as this pre-school education is proven to be the best investment in a person’s lifetime we are in a hurry to solve this issue. The children that do go to school are more than often found learning in run-down facilities with unhygienic toilets or unsafe buildings one pillar away from collapse. Our goal of ensuring that every child receives an education might take a long time, but we will be here along with all the incredible NGOs, organisations, communities, people, governments, young people, and professionals fighting this fight together.

I remember the day everything came together.

When we visited Timor-Leste for the first time, we had stayed in a community called Samalete, in the Ermera Municipality. We were particularly inspired by a leader by the name of Cirilo Soares, a very famous name for many Australians who have been greeted by his humble curiosity and good nature. We first met Cirilo as he guided us around his village in Railaco, sharing his stories of the Indonesian occupation and the lifelong effects he still feels today by the loss of his family and his basic human rights.

After two years of lost contact and on our second visit to Timor-Leste, Alessandro and I went looking for Cirilo with the hope that he would have the knowledge we needed to execute our ideas. It took us a taxi ride into the mountains until the rundown car couldn’t travel any further, a “switcheroo” to a larger Jeep that was able to traverse the dizzying road for an hour and finally up into a small community where we thought we may have luck. To our dismay, we couldn’t locate him.

Eventually, we started our retreat back down the winding road built for one motorcycle, if you were lucky, and in true Timorese style, we found ourselves traversing two large “troopies” on the edges of a steep mountain. As people from both cars got out and started relaying messages to the drivers about which way to turn, one of the men was Cirilo. I still remember our warm embrace. It was with Cirilo that we were able to finish not only our first pre-school in Railaco Motahare, but also our second and third in Fahisoi, Aileu Municipality, and Fahiten, Likiqisa Municipality.

He is a guiding light that has helped us discuss requirements with the community, arrange land agreements, budgets, program of works and bill of quantities, staff payments, and everything in between. Like Cirilo, we have met many incredible Timorese people particularly Milo Fatima who volunteers alongside his regular job to deliver partnership agreements and project management. We continue to be led by Timorese people and communities in all aspects of our organisation and seek to enable them to overcome their barriers to poverty where possible.

I’ve visited Timor-Leste nine times now and it’s a place I call a second home.

My friends and family know that my favourite time, before COVID-19, of course, was my university breaks. This time gave me the opportunity to head straight to Timor-Leste hours after my final exams and it was here where I would experience more emotions and events than I could ever imagine. Even better, each visit was unique as I had the most incredible people alongside me. We all worked tirelessly to make the most out of our 2–3 week long trips while taking in all the nation has to offer. Timor-Leste is an untouched paradise with incredible natural and man-made elements. We always make sure that we take in the beauty in the landscape, people, culture, and customs of the Timorese communities we engage with. This included staying at Atauro Island which has the most biodiverse waters in the world, climbing the breathtaking Mount Ramelau (2,968m), and learning about the rich history at Balibo.

As I ventured each June and November to the nation for over five years, I uncovered new challenges and insights that allowed me to connect the dots underpinning the systemic education issue we are trying to solve. Whether that be no water source connected to a village and how that impacts construction, let alone survival, or how the land ownership determines your ability to even think about building, meaning we’ve had to understand Portugal’s colonial foundations in the nation and the complex land law system at play.

These experiences have meant that I now embrace the unexpected. We’ve been caught amidst translation errors with rural communities, street riots, political turmoil and election spills, and lack of food, water, or petrol. Regardless, these are the experiences that have shaped who am I as a leader of Educating The Future and have given me a greater appreciation for the daily lives of the beautiful Timorese people.

The challenges leading Educating The Future

Educating The Future has fared up well against these collective challenges, and I have personally battled with my own from day to day. A question I often get is what was the “most difficult thing Educating The Future has achieved?”. I can definitely say (and I believe that many of the team would agree) that it was our first pre-school in Railaco Motahare.

To start a brand new program, with absolutely no template or experience, seems hard enough on the surface. Let alone when we started to investigate these phenomenons at a deeper level, our task became increasingly complex. We knew that this would a challenge of a lifetime. So much so that I remember giving a presentation at an ex-pat dinner with our team one night in Timor-Leste where our early ideas were heavily criticised because of their ambition. This was to try and deliver public pre-schools fully supported by all levels of the government for half the price it had been done in the past by engaging the community in construction and all aspects of decision-making. These discussions occur in a time where the development sector is fraught by well meaning people seeking to do good but in a way that didn’t necessarily benefit the communities in a sustainable way. In my journey, I have been told stories of failed education builds and we were certain that we would not make those same mistakes.

Afterward, as all ten of us got into the lift, I remember everyone bursting into laughter to relieve the tension. Deep down, we knew that despite our experience, we would listen and be patient to achieve our goal. It also provided us with a motivation to get the partnerships, budget and community discussions complete. From that day, it felt like there was an energy pushing us forward no matter what hurdles we were to face. It was a feat that we achieved some 12 months later, much to the surprise of this group.

On a personal note, as many of my friends, family, and colleagues know, for a period of two years I was truly burning both ends of the candle. At a glimpse, my schedule for 3 months was full-time work while I finished my Bachelor of Commerce (Co-Op) degree at UNSW requiring me to attend class from 6 pm — 9 pm. After this, you could find me finishing assignments at the library, and even later I was focused on raising funds, designing programs, and organising board deliverables until the early hours of the morning. Working 9 am to 2 am was something I hope I don’t have to do again…

Today, when times do get difficult and overbearingly complex, I reflect on the importance of our organisation today. We are one of the only entities building pre-schools — a responsibility we are keen to see out. Our role has never been more important in light of the reversing effects of COVID-19 on global poverty and the tightening of resources. All of our work is ongoing and it was not achieved at one stroke or through one trek, nor is it complete to this day.

Thinking back on the five years that have passed by so quickly, my most vivid memories are the noise of 30 student volunteers standing outside a UNSW university classroom ready to work on all things Educating The Future until the early hours of the morning. And we did this every second Tuesday for four years straight! There was such a contagious buzz in the air because we knew that we were working towards something life-changing, not only for our beneficiaries but also for ourselves as budding social change agents. I also remember the countless Bunnings sausage sizzles, the time spent organising education materials from local high schools and packing them into 500 pencil cases, and sleepless nights spent in Darwin airport trying to organise last-minute accommodation.

All in all, however, Educating The Future was and continues to be a tight-knit “family-like” affair. It has truly been a pleasure to have experienced such comradery where we would all go home after a three hour late-night meeting and keep working on projects long into the early hours of the morning. It is special to think about what we have — and deep down, I knew walking into those university rooms every second Tuesday was something unique. Like people who love to share photos of their pets on nights out (as I do frequently), I find myself showing people photos of our pre-schools and of the people who helped achieved this.

Our achievements as a group of young, ambitious students

Having reflected on our whole story, I’d love to highlight what we’ve achieved together with all of our 200 young volunteers and students in Australia and Timor-Leste, most notably:

• $400,000 raised and counting (including funding from the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade Friendship Grant).
• Constructed three pre-schools with another two in the pipeline for completion 2022.
• Over 200 volunteers from Australia and Timor aged 16 to 75.
• I have visited Timor-Leste nine times with 35 of my volunteer peers.
• Four gala dinners, two touch rugby gala days, countless trivia nights, Bunnings BBQs (and chopped onions), Cadbury chocolate boxes, and even a Coogee to Bondi coastal walk!
• Hundreds of Board meetings, fortnightly volunteer team workshops, and committee meetings over five years.
• Delivered 300kg of learning materials to pre and primary schools in Timor-Leste.
• Australian Council for International Development accreditation in 2020.
• Australian NGO Cooperation Program (ANCP) base-level application submitted (for those who are aware of the difficulty of this application, you can be sure that we are all extremely proud regardless of the outcome).

We’ve been privileged to experience so much!

One of the good things about starting this initiative so young is the need to listen and learn to find a way forward. Particularly when the project is delayed for weeks on end due to unforeseen community commitments, torrential weather that we’ve never experienced in sunny Sydney, or trying to organise accurate budgets dealing with large sums of cement in the local language. Through listening and talking with people, I was moved to understand Timor-Leste’s recent history and relationship with Indonesia. Such interest took me to live in Indonesia for six months to learn about the region’s history and learn both Timorese and Indonesian Bahasa languages to be able to work and converse with the people and communities we collaborate with. I have also come to understand my privilege and the role that my education and the opportunities provided to me have enabled me to lead this organisation.

“A lot has happened since we undertook that first or second trip to Timor-Leste or the walk, or even thought of the name or asking our friends for the very first donations. We have established a professional board, a team of incredible volunteers and are continuously increasing our funding. That’s the short story. The long story? Behind closed doors, we’ve had a team of young people working tirelessly every day to try and make this something that would last forever. And that after we are done working towards our vision, the next generation can pick up where we left off and continue to change the world for the better.”

I’d like to express my sincere appreciation to everyone that has believed in Educating The Future and in me.

Our achievements are a testament to the two hundred volunteers and thousands of donors, supporters, and advisors that have made a decision somewhere along the way to back us. This was despite the fact that we were a group of ambitious and at times “naive” students.

I’d like nothing more than to name each and every person who has helped along the way. Practically it would take up more words than I can afford. I really do appreciate everything you’ve done (and I hope you all know who you are) from giving us advice on how to start a charity to running events and structuring good governance. I’d like to particularly thank the founding Board and long-standing executive, my mentors and supporters, advisors, donors, family, and friends for always being there for us.

Presently, I’m reflecting on what I will do next with my career and Educating The Future. One such ambition is to stay with Educating The Future forever (which a large part of me would love nothing more to do), and at times I think that I could easily live in Timor-Leste and the Indo-Pacific for many years to come. While there is much truth to these prospects, I am still writing the pages of my own metaphoric novel. I’m proud of my role in this small and ambitious charity, and the steps we have walked. I will continue volunteering my time for as long as I can — after all, I have gained so much from this experience, particularly a sense of purpose. I know there is no shortage of talented young people capable of leading Educating The Future and I’m confident that we will thrive in the years to come.

Furthermore, many people often thank me for my work with the organisation but I’d like to thank Educating The Future and the people of Timor-Leste for trusting in our team and myself with this responsibility. I’m forever grateful for this opportunity!

I am certain, however, that I wish to study public policy and work in the not-for-profit context as a vocal contributor in the decades to come across the issues of education, climate change, and gender equality. I am also ready to visit Timor-Leste for the tenth time. It’s been nearly 18 months and despite the fact that we have built an organisation that can be run from our mobile phones and Zoom, the physical connection we have to the people and communities in Timor-Leste makes this venture even more meaningful to me.

We need your help to reach our new goals!

I am excited to announce that co-founder Alessandro and I will be embarking on a 104 km non-stop Great Ocean Walk starting at 5 am on August 12 and ending approximately 36 hours later. It has been over five years since we first asked for funds and now as a mature and proven organisation, we are ready to raise another $30,000 and build another pre-school classroom. With this goal in mind, I wish to ask those who are both financially able and feel inspired by this charity to make a $53 donation to educate one child aged 3–6 for a year at our next public, disability-inclusive pre-school. Without the Australian public’s support, these children would not be afforded this basic human right and I hope you know how much we cherish each gift.

Make a tax-deductible donation today!

As I draw this reflection to a close, it is clear that what has made this journey special was being able to spend my teenage and young adult years working on Educating The Future with so many incredible people. As we continue growing up, I will forever cherish the story that we’ve created and look forward to the next chapter. It has brought me great joy in sharing with you my most honest reflections about my time building, learning, and leading “ETF”. I hope that I can continue sharing these stories in the years to come.

If you want to get involved with Educating The Future, you can volunteer, become a donor, or even build a pre-school classroom via our website. To provide feedback or to have a chat, I’d love for you to reach out via LinkedIn or at [email protected].

Thank you for reading.

Adam (he/him)