Hugh Hawes Tribute
A tribute to Hugh Hawes beloved teacher and mentor to our founder and director, Clare Hanbury, who died aged 85 on July 3rd, 2014.
…We met in 1988. I was doing a Masters course on Education in Developing Countries at the University of London’s Institute of Education. Hugh was running a curriculum design module there. I attended one of Hugh’s lectures. Afterwards I told him I was inspired by his ideas. He told me to go and find his orange covered book in the library. It was called, ‘Approaches to Learning and Teaching‘. I was hooked. It remains the only academic book I have read from cover to cover without stopping. It was a treasure trove full of the very ideas I wanted to learn, to absorb and to use.
I told him that I need to find a way to get him to teach me more. He invited me to join a course on Curriculum Development he was running for Zambian Head Teachers; in return I had to organise their visits to various educational institutions across the country as their curriculum ‘tour guide’. From then on and as my mentor, I have never really left his side.
For 6 years, I was one of his programme officers at the Child-to-Child Trust and with his guidance and the collaboration of many others, we worked together to build the architecture of its approach. We danced, sang and cried side-by-side at many Child-to-Child events in Kenya, Uganda, Ghana and South Africa. Before the Masters course, I had been a primary school teacher and a drama specialist and when I met Hugh I was searching for a way to transition into international development. He showed me how. He drew the map and together we walked along so many pathways.
During our time together at Child-to-Child, his network of friends and colleagues became my network of friends and colleagues. Professor David Morley – the co-founder of Child-to-Child – was another crucial influence. David died almost exactly five years before Hugh, on July 2nd, 2009. David and Hugh are the giants upon whose shoulders I stand today. David: the reason why I founded Children for Health. And Hugh, the inspiration behind every minute of the work we do.
Since learning of Hugh’s death there has been and always will be a Hugh-sized hole in my heart.
Six words sum up what Hugh inspires in me and qualified by words I imagine him saying to me:
Give: make your work the best and give all your best work away. The world gave you this work, give it back to the world.
Learn: don’t sit smugly, for the world changes, learn about these new discoveries and new ways of sharing and giving. Keep up!
Teach: many people don’t have the access you have nor the advantages you have had. Use your skills to make important ideas flow.
Think: think in the bath like me! Think! Let your mind fizz and pop and new and better ideas will come.
Dream: don’t for one second be small, be big – there is always something bigger you can do – so go there!
Love: There is no ‘them and us’, we are all together. Love people, have fun. Rejoice!
Hugh, I see you in heaven in a corner somewhere, already teaching the angels how to make their wings shine brighter and beat faster and making all those around you laugh while you do so.