Press Article: Woodford & Wanstead Guardian Thursday October 19, 2006

It's September 1968 in Eastern Cape province, South Africa and a 19-year old English girl takes off her dusty shoes and lets the icy-cold Atlantic lap gently over her tired feet. She takes a moment to drink in the physical beauty of her surroundings, but is quickly reminded of the repression and inequalities that divide the vast country.

Mary Khan, who now lives in Wordsworth Avenue, South Woodford, had left her London home to work in a nursery for black children in Grahamstown. The school was part of the Bethlehem Home, a project run by The Anglican Sisters of the Community of the Resurrection (CR), to give abandoned and orphaned children a better start in life.

Mary Khan loved working with the children and was inspired by their enthusiasm and happiness, despite the deprivations many had experienced and the stark reality of the inequalities which divided South Africa.

She said: "We had taken the children for a day by the sea but this was the apartheid era and the beaches were reserved for white people only. I was only young, and knew little of the apartheid system, but right away felt strongly, that it wasn't right."

Mary Khan left Grahamstown after ten months of life-changing work, only returning by chance 35 years later on the way to a friend´s wedding. She returned to the scene of her experiences as a teenager and saw black children facing similar disadvantages to those decades earlier.

Mary Khan, a grandmother of six, decided to help build a better future for the youngsters by helping to fund the construction of a new school. Mary, along with husband Paul and fellow campaigner Peter Koukoulis, set about organising countless charity events to earn the cash needed to complete the project. The Rainbow Kidz charity was born.