When a gift becomes a legacy: honouring Londolozi’s centenary through a R10-million act of light

The light you hold today becomes the dawn that tomorrow’s children will wake up to. In Southern Africa, we don’t just dream of a brighter future – we’re illuminating the path to it, one connection at a time.

It’s not often that someone you’ve known for more than 30 years can still surprise you. But that’s exactly what happened to us at Good Work Foundation.

Londolozi, one of our founding partners, made a decision that marked a significant moment in our shared history. As this world-famous private game reserve approached its 100th year in 2026, a century shaped by conservation, community, family and story, its current stewards chose to dedicate their centenary gift not to themselves, but to others. They dedicated it to the young people of South Africa, the rural communities we serve and the future we are building together.

Dave Varty, co-owner of Londolozi and a long-time GWF friend, adviser and board member, confirmed that Londolozi would donate R1-million for every decade of their journey – a R10-million centenary gift for Good Work Foundation.

We recognised immediately what this gift means for the future of our work. This is not just a financial gift. It marks a full-circle moment in a relationship that has had an impact on our work since it was a tiny spark of an idea.

Long before GWF became a constellation of learning campuses, the first embers of our fire were lit. In 1999, Kate Groch, a teacher at heart, and Bronwyn and Boyd Varty experimented with a pioneering model of reimagined education in the community of Philippolis in the Free State.

From those early adventures, a deep truth revealed itself: the heart of education is access. Access to opportunity. Access to knowledge. Access to personal power. Access to emotional literacy and the ability to understand yourself well enough to shape the world around you.

Those early prototypes taught us that education is not merely about a curriculum. It is about belonging. It is dignity. It is identity and opportunity braided together.

GWF grew not from boardrooms or policy documents, but from the ground up, listening carefully to what communities told us they needed. 

That grassroots nature remains our greatest strength.

GWF has never been a large, layered organisation. Like a well-rooted tree, we grow in close relationship with our surroundings, drawing strength from the ground beneath us and responding to the conditions around us. 

Our work stays close to communities. We listen before we act, and we adapt as and when change is needed. Every programme, classroom and digital hub is co-created with the people it serves. 

This approach is why GWF has grown into a reimagined education model for Africa: relevant, deeply human and shaped by our location and the communities we serve. Londolozi has believed in this work from the beginning and it is the innovation of this work that the game reserve is honouring with its generous gift, ensuring we can grow our footprint to even more communities.

Londolozi has walked beside us since our “banana shed” days in Hazyview, where our ideas were first seeded, and through a prototype learning centre inside Londolozi Village run by “Gogo Mo” (Maureen Groch). Together, we have worked shoulder to shoulder in rural communities across South Africa, from Hazyview to Philippolis.

What began as an idea has evolved into a constellation of six digital learning campuses. Six spaces where young people step out of limitation and into possibility. Six portals into the future, with a seventh emerging in 2026.

This is what partnership looks like. This is what holding the light looks like.

Londolozi has caused a ripple effect for a century – not just in conservation, but also in community upliftment and education, in the quiet, steady work of making the world a little brighter than its founders found it.

So, perhaps it is no surprise that on the eve of the reserve’s centenary, it chose to let its ripple truly count.

This gift is more than money. It is an energetic undercurrent that supports the acceleration of our mission. It is a reminder that when people choose to hold the light together, lives are changed.

Today, as the Good Work Foundation, we want to express our deepest gratitude to Londolozi, our communities, and every ranger, educator, villager, elder, learner, donor and guest who chooses Africa. And, of course, to every friend who has kept the flame alive.

Because holding the light does not always mean doing something grand. Sometimes it means lifting your head when things are hard, offering help when others need it. Sometimes it means giving what you can – time, resources, knowledge, belief.

For 100 years, Londolozi has held the light. Through this centenary moment, they invite others to help keep it burning for generations to come, and deepen the shared commitment carried forward every day by communities, partners and GWF in service of rural children and youth. 

If you’d like to mark Londolozi’s 100th birthday by supporting the work it has chosen to honour, we invite you to become part of what’s next for GWF.

Hold the light alongside us. Together, we can ensure that the dawn tomorrow’s children wake up to is filled with possibility, connection, dignity and hope.

This is just the beginning.