Dear Friends of the Harry Birrell Scholarship Trust,

 

With Christmas fast approaching I wanted to thank you all for your on-going support of our mission to provide talented but poor youngsters in Grahamstown, South Africa with life changing top quality secondary school education.

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Please put in your diary for next year the evening of Thursday 1st June, when

we will be hosting a very special Jubilee dinner (21st Birthday party!) for the

Trust in the long room at Lord's. Adi Birrell, Harry's son, a pioneer of cricket

development in the townships back in the 1980s and now the Protea's no.2 coach will be with us that evening (the South Africans are touring England) and I hope many friends will be able to join us kick start our 5 year campaign to put the Trust on a strong financial footing to provide 15 children (3 in each secondary school year) with top class education in perpetuity. I am confident it will be a wonderful occasion. We will send out more details in the new year but please do save the date and tell friends too.

I also wanted to share the message from Abenathi I read out in London recently at the Trust's 20th birthday party and a Christmas message I wrote about Harry a number of years ago which I hope you will enjoy sharing with your friends and family at this special time of year.

I was asked recently to sum up in a sentence what the Harry Birrell Scholarship Trust was all about (no easy task for a loquacious chap like me!) and came up with the following... "harvesting friendship to help others less fortunate than ourselves get a quality education by which they can make a success of their lives".

Wishing you and family a very happy Christmas full of friendship.

Stephen

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