By ALAN PERROTT education reporter
Scott Gilmour is giving a small fortune and 15 years of his life
to three dozen children he has only just met.
And he can't keep the smile off his face.
The 45-year-old software developer is sponsoring the first "I
Have a Dream" project to be set up outside the United States and
plans to guide 36 Mt Roskill children from primary school through to
university study.
The scheme began in New York to offer guidance, motivation and
financial help to children from low-income areas and has spread to
64 cities in 27 states.
If the students reach tertiary level study, their sponsor agrees
to finance their education.
Mr Gilmour's "dreamers" are the entire Year 4 class from Wesley
Primary School in Mt Roskill - an almost entirely immigrant group of
eight and nine-year-olds from Tonga, Samoa, the Cook Islands, Fiji
and Ethiopia.
"This is the project of a lifetime," said the father of four from
Takapuna. "But I think I'll be paid back in so many different ways
before it's finished."
As he talks, a handful of children wearing their blue dreamer
shirts are sitting at computers in their classroom as a few
non-dreaming classmates peer through the door.
These lucky few attend after-school classes throughout the week
where fulltime co-ordinator Antony "Coach" Backhouse and a group of
volunteers teach, read and encourage.
There are also regular field trips and holiday programmes - paid
for through sponsors.
Two trustees, Wesley Primary deputy principal Vasa Auva'a-Key and
Mt Roskill Senior Constable Nick Tuitasi, have joined to satisfy
doubters and one of their signatures is required to access the
group's trust fund.
Mr Gilmour would not say how much money is in the fund, but
claimed that it was probably overendowed because he used United
States education costs as a guide.
He is also paying the Institute for Professional Development and
Educational Research at Massey University to track the children's
progress.
Initial baseline tests found only one child with acceptable
reading skills, and almost all the others two or three years behind.
Although the project was launched this week, it was almost a year
in the making and has been running since the school year began.
Mr Gilmour's inspiration was a story he found in an American
newspaper in 1991 and filed away until his software company, ABC
Technology, was sold to the United States giant SAS in 2002.
It tells of Eugene Lang, an American businessman invited to
address graduates at his old school in East Harlem, New York, in
1981.
After hearing that three-quarters of the students would never
finish high school, he promised to pay for the education of any who
reached university and the project was launched.
