Name Kim Feinberg | ||
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Kim Feinberg (born 1962 in South Africa) is a community organiser and philanthropic worker. She is best known as the founder of Tomorrow Trust, an organisation that educates children in South Africa who have been orphaned by AIDS, apartheid, and poverty. In 2003 she was elected a Fellow by Ashoka: Innovators for the Public.
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Early life
Feinberg grew up in a broken home of limited financial means in apartheid South Africa, gaining a background in the performing arts. She was raised in a Jewish household. In 1993 she attended a showing of the seminal movie Schindler's List, which deeply moved her and motivated her to begin an oral-history project to capture personal histories of Holocaust survivors and witnesses for the Shoah Foundation. Inspired by her work, she started the Foundation for Education Tolerance, which spreads awareness of global atrocities to young people.
Her volunteer work led her to the Topsy Foundation, a South African organisation which works to combat the deleterious effects of HIV/AIDS. Many of that disease's victims are children, which caused Feinberg to tell herself, "I must do something. I'd been part of the biggest oral history project in the world and yet no one had heard the voices of these kids." Her decision was to create the Tomorrow Publication. She gathered the stories of several orphans and collated them into a book, which drew upon the talents of several of the children in writing and drawing portions of the book. Most of the profits raised by sales of the book went into the Tomorrow Trust.
Feinberg has two children, a son and a daughter.
Tomorrow Trust
In 2005 Feinberg started the Tomorrow Trust, which promotes "hand-ups" rather than hand-outs. Rather than simply helping orphans survive, the trust focuses on integrating them into society. Feinberg's approach is considered innovative for its simplicity and applicability. She designed it intending for it to be replicable anywhere in the world. The approach is three-tiered, involving an oral history awareness campaign, private schooling during holiday periods, and connections with secondary education and training programs. The private schooling period includes education, nutritious food, comfortable housing, and classes on budgeting, critical-thinking, and team-building.
Tomorrow Trust is funded by corporations invested in producing quality graduates. Students who complete the program score higher on competency tests than the general public. They are required to pay back 10% of their salary for two years after graduation.