On the 6th of November, my 17-year-old son Matthew and I will travel back to Cape Town for the 2026 Mellon Educate Building Blitz — our second year on the tools.

Last November we spent a week building classrooms for children living in the Lwandle township outside the city. Mellon Educate has been working there for around ten years, and the job now was about expanding it — more room, more places, more children able to attend. In one week we put up 3 buildings (containing 6 classrooms), a playground and a garden.

The photos above are from that week — the hard hats and the dirt are real, and so is the handover day, when we gave the keys to a group of kids who could not quite believe the place was theirs.

But a building on its own is just a building. A large part of what we fund is the literacy work that goes inside it — computers, equipment, the resources that turn four walls into a room where a child actually learns to read. That is the part that lasts long after we fly home.

So we're going back to do it again!

Rockwell Financial Management will match every donation. For every €1 you give, €2 goes to the charity.

Matthew and I will do the lifting. Rockwell will double whatever you give. All we need from you is the €€€ that becomes bricks, a roof, and a computer on a desk.

Please give what you can.