Honors project earns ultimate tribute for Skidmore grad:  His name on a building

A South African orphanage to which a recent Skidmore graduate donated more than $11,000 raised as part of a senior honors project will name a building in his honor.

Steve Mazza, an education studies major from South Salem, N.Y., who graduated from Skidmore last month, raised the money by producing and marketing a CD of his own songs. He undertook the project after visiting South Africa in 2005 as part of the College’s “Skidmore in Africa” program–an intensive four-week exploration of South Africa’s primary school system.

So moved was Mazza both by the poverty he saw and by the determination of South Africans to develop their country that he resolved on his flight home to make a substantive contribution before graduating.

The result was Acoustic Dreams, a “chronicle of the experiences I’ve had over the past four years from leaving home to getting ready to leave college,” as Mazza describes it.

Designing the cover himself and paying $1,500 of his own money to produce 1,000 copies, Mazza launched an aggressive marketing and fund-raising campaign that included his personally writing “all of my friends, friends’ parents, and everyone else I’ve ever known,” setting up a table in the Skidmore student center, and appealing to 600 friends in Facebook.

By Skidmore’s Commencement on May 19, Mazza’s goal of selling all the CD’s of Acoustic Dreams was achieved and, after receiving his diploma, he was able to hand Karen Brackett, founder of the Skidmore in Africa program, a check for $11,525 made payable to the Makhulong Children’s Village, a new orphanage near Pretoria established by the Edendale Primary School to care primarily for children whose parents have died of AIDS. Skidmore has had ties to the school since the mid-1990s and Mazza taught there during his 2005 visit.

This year, Brackett—who is leading a fresh group of 17 Skidmore students and three teachers from the Saratoga Springs School District on a four-week tour of South Africa that will end June 15—delivered Mazza’s check to Rina Prenzler, Makhulong Edu-Center’s chief executive officer.

“It was a very moving ceremony at which we also presented to the children quilts made by the Skidmore students and professional staff at Patti’s Quilt Shop in South Glens Falls using African and American fabric,” said Brackett. “The children were so thankful and they sang several songs to show their appreciation. That evening we all traveled to a performance of the ‘Lion King’ in Johannesburg and the children brought their quilts for the bus ride.”

Prenzler said Mazza’s donation will be used either to build a new hostel or refurbish an existing building. In either case, she said, the building will be named for Mazza and a plaque in his honor will be placed on the building.

“Although we have been doing the cultural exchange with Skidmore and the Edendale School since 1996, the Makhulong—which means ‘place of everything’ or ‘green pastures’ in Sotho—is a dream we have held since 1991,” Prenzler explained. “This dream was for homeless, orphaned, and vulnerable children to have a home and family, where they can play and grow healthy minds and bodies and to be educated to fill their space in a competitive world.”

This dream only became reality in 2006 when the Edendale farm—a mission station in the late 1800s—was donated to the school, Prenzler continued. “We are looking forward to building individual homes for as many as 200 children and to give them all they need to live meaningful lives.  A very sincere thanks to Steve Mazza for contributing to this dream and touching the lives of our children!”

Brackett and her students are maintaining a daily journal of their trip, which can be found on the Skidmore Web site at http://cms.skidmore.edu/southafrica/2007/index.cfm. They chronicle their experience at Edendale specifically at http://cms.skidmore.edu/southafrica/2007/edendale-2007.cfm.

A sampling of songs performed by Mazza on Acoustic Dreams may be found at Mazza’s MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/stevemazzamusic.