Alan Adlington-Corfield is the Executive Head of School at the M-Pesa Foundation Academy, a state of the art learning institution helping disadvantaged students.
Before coming to Kenya, Alan was a mathematics teacher in South Africa where he was born and raised.
Here is his story as told by WoK.
Background
Alan was born in the 70s in the eastern coast of South Africa before they moved to Cape Town where he spent most of his life.
“I had two very different parents. My mother is very liberal, very much about equality and human rights. She was a teacher and a great inspiration to me, a lady with a big heart
“My father was on the other extreme. He had some very racist perspectives on things. And it’s very challenging as a young man because you’re always looking for your male parent to be your role model,” he said.
Unfortunately, he lost his dad to cancer while he was 24.
Teaching
By the time Alan chose to pursue teaching, the profession had no honour but he worked extra hard to become an accomplished maths teacher.
Having grown in South Africa during the apartheid period, he is among the first plebeians from the southern African country to become teachers.
“I’m proud of what I’m doing now because it’s such a unique type of work, I’m fulfilling a life’s purpose and it’s wonderful to be in such a deeply significant place in your life, in your career. It’s deeply fulfilling,” Alan told Business Daily.
On practicing his teaching profession in Kenya, Alan said he had, at one point, imagined about traveling abroad and impacting people’s life.
“When I was in my 20s, I belonged to a Bible study group and someone came to me in one session and said, I had this vision about you, and that you’re going to travel abroad and transform the lives of young people
“I thought they were crazy. I was like yeah, you’ve got the wrong person and I never thought about it since,” he said.
Before his job at M-Pesa Foundation Academy, Alan started as a math teacher before his role as head of departments in two different schools.
He then moved to management, a senior academic head of school and then a deputy head of school and finally the head of school.
“I’ve never worked abroad until this position here so maybe that was the prophecy. My journey in South Africa was perhaps fairly typical in terms of education although being very driven to succeed,” Alan stated.
M-Pesa Foundation Academy
M-Pesa Foundation Academy is a co-educational and residential High school offering the Kenyan National Curriculum.
The institution offers International Baccalaureate Career-Related Programme (IBCP), the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) and the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme (IBMYP).
The school was built by Safaricom through the M-Pesa Foundation at a tune of Ksh 3 billion.
The Safaricom Foundation broke ground for the school in May 2015 and opened its doors to their first 96 learners in February 2016.
The school now hosts over 480 students from each of the 47 counties in Kenya.
At the time, Safaricom Foundation Chairman Michael Joseph said the company would educate, free of charge, the students up to university level in institutions of their choice around the world.
The school is located in Mang’u.
