Making a difference under African skies

Published on Sunday 9 March 2008 18:48

JENNIFER VEITCH meets Lynne Mendelsohn, a senior lawyer who is leaving behind life in Scotland to set up a new charity to help orphans in Africa

FOR most solicitors, supporting a charity goes about as far as doing some pro bono work or taking part in a sponsored sports event in aid of a worthy cause. But Lynne Mendelsohn’s commitment to making a difference is fast turning into a life-changing experience for her and for children in Africa.

Mendelsohn – currently head of renewables with Dundas & Wilson and a former partner with Shepherd+ Wedderburn – is not only setting up her own charity to raise funds for orphaned children, but she also plans to move to Zambia to start a new life.

When relatively few lawyers reach partner status while still in their thirties, it may seem like Mendelsohn, who has advised major clients including Scottish Parliament on construction issues, has much to lose and little to gain from abandoning her legal career. But she explains that a turning point came in late 2006, when she went on holiday to Tanzania and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, which reinvigorated her interest in travelling. When she got back, she found she couldn’t settle back into her job, and decided to take a year-long sabbatical to do voluntary work in Africa.

After spending most of last year helping teach children at a school in Zambia and supporting the aid efforts following last year’s cyclone in neighbouring Mozambique, Mendelsohn quickly found there would be no going back to her old way of life.

“I had been brewing on travelling for a while, and I had done a lot when I was younger – when you have got that in you, it’s always there,” she says. “In August 2006 I climbed Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. I came back, and, within three weeks, I realised I wasn’t settling and I wanted to take a break. I felt I wanted to do something different. In January 2007 I headed off to Livingstone in Zambia – I was teaching there and working in an orphanage and community centre. It was absolutely amazing.”

Mendelsohn was placed as a teaching assistant at the Dambwa Basic School, and was quickly trusted to teach everything from art to geography to PE, including rounders, to children aged 11 to 14. But while she enjoyed the classes, and particularly encouraging pupils to use their imagination through art, she found some of the cultural attitudes towards children much harder to cope with.

“It’s a very traditional society, and it’s very much the custom to hit children,” she says. “There was a child who was beaten for being late for school and she collapsed in shock. They were going to put her in a room and pray for her, so I took her to the hospital and paid for her to be treated. They tested for diabetes and low iron, but that as about all they had the facility to test for.”

The little girl recovered, but a poignant moment came on Mendelsohn’s 40th birthday when one of her pupils, an 11-year-old boy called Gift, shook his head when she suggested one day he’d be just as old as she was.

“He said to me, ‘Not me, teacher, I already have HIV,’” she says. “Yet here was someone who has such an appetite for life.”

HIV/Aids is only one of the major problems facing millions of people in Africa, and Mendelsohn saw at first hand the struggle for survival endured by those affected by last February’s cyclone in Mozambique. She volunteered on behalf of the UN’s World Food Programme, helping to deliver aid, and was disturbed to find a group of homeless children had been scavenging in the bush.

“I met a missionary who had come across some children who were living wild in the bush,” she says. “He just took on the responsibility for trying to look after them. I tried to help find them things like sleeping mats, because they were sleeping on the ground.”

While their living conditions have improved, the children are still living in a makeshift “orphanage” of some tents pitched on the dry red earth. Mendelsohn now hopes to raise funds through her new charity – Life Begins – to build them some proper accommodation.

“What the charity is trying to do is get some money for a building for the children,” she says. “They need medical care, and we also need to get money for a borehole.”

She adds that even small things that children in more affluent countries take for granted have made a real difference.

“When I first saw them they were traumatised, and they weren’t playing with each other,” Mendelsohn says. “When I went back a few months later, I saw the difference in the children, just from knowing they had regular food and somewhere to live, and people who were responsible for looking after them. When I went back, they were children again, and that’s why I am doing this.”

She adds she wants to raise funds to help support orphans in Zambia, particularly when they are due to leave the orphanage and make their own way in the world.

“They are on their own and very vulnerable, so they need support,” she says. “One of the other things is trying to give them some more options. There is one boy who, if he passes his exams, wants to go to Lusaka University to study to be a doctor.”

It would be easy to become overwhelmed by the pressing needs of so many children in a country where average life expectancy is only 34, but Mendelsohn adds it is important to have realistic goals. “At the end of the day, you have to focus on what you can do,” she says. “And that is what has motivated me to try to set up a charity.”

She has an additional motivation for moving to Zambia, however – she not only fell in love with the country, but met her fianc Vasco, there. They plan to marry later this year.

“The guy I met is from a small village in a rural area, and we get on brilliantly,” she says. “He is back home at the moment – the Scottish winter was a bit cold for him – so I am missing him madly.”

Mendelsohn adds she has been pleased her friends and colleagues are behind her in what she is trying to do.

“Sometimes I just think this is too daunting and I can’t do it, and I am not quite sure how I am going to get there,” she says. “But the reaction I have had has been amazing.”

She has also found her firm, which she told about her plans at the outset, is very supportive of her aims, and has been flexible in allowing her time to set up Life Begins.

“I came back and I realised I didn’t want to be a partner any more – I didn’t want that level of commitment,” she says. “Now I have got a role that gives me a lot of latitude.”

&#149 For details, visit www.lifebegins.org.uk or e-mail