OLs from across the decades joined the Head Master, Dominic Oliver with his wife, Dr Lydia Rainford, and Foundation Director, Catherine Reeve for drinks and dinner on 25 October at The University Club in New York City. We were delighted to have Professor Zuzana Belisova-Gyure with us, a current Lancing parent with a son in Second’s house. We are also extremely grateful to Andy Whitehouse, Sanderson’s 1990-1995 for facilitating the event and heading up Lancing relations in New York. It was a lovely evening and wonderful to meet such a dynamic group of people all with a common interest in hearing more about their old school. In particular, our US-based community welcomed Nana Oduro-Nyaning, Gibbs’ 2018-2023 to the reunion as a newly fledged young OL studying in America. Nana is an OL Foundationer and in his first year as a Morehead-Cain Scholar at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
During dinner Nana spoke passionately about what a Lancing education had meant to him and the opportunities which were made available to him as part of the bursary programme and encouraged all those around the table to continue to support the Foundationers campaign in whatever way they could so that more young people would be given the chance to change their lives as he had. It was a heartfelt message and reinforced to the audience why the Lancing programme is now being used as a model in other schools.
It was good as well to have the opportunity to meet other OLs during our trip who were unable to attend the evening event – Julian Robins, Olds 1976-1980, Paul Lisiak, Olds 1992-1993 and Kamal Saleh, Teme 1999-2004.
