Schools Liaison Manager, ICT projects
Redstone

Khembe C

00:02 My name is Khembe C, schools liaison manager for Redstone. Redstone is an ICT company we are a national company and we work in various sectors so we work in the education sector, public sector, private sector, providing ICT solutions. We’re working a very big programme Building Schools for the Future programme and as an ICT partner we’re responsible for putting all the ICT equipment into schools. So my job is to ensure that I’m liaising with staff in the school.

00:40 When I was a young girl at school I always wanted to be a teacher, and my sister was a teacher in the school, so I suppose indirectly she was an influence on me and a bit of a role model I think. And I ended up teaching adults for about 10 years. I got married just after leaving school, I got married at 19 thought I was very mature at the time and, after about 3 years I became divorced and actually that was a godsend because then I decided to return to education.

01:17 First I went to Manchester university to do sociology because actually that subject opened up my eyes to different ways of looking at the world. I was brought up in a family that basically it was about going to church every day or every evening, after school so I didn’t see much more than church and school. At the age of 11 I went to a girl’s school. When all my friends were going out talking about boyfriends and going to concerts you know my friends would come to school in the morning and say, oh did you, did you see that pop star on TV and I’d sometimes play along and say yeah I did and I didn’t, because I was at church at the time.

02:05 Actually I look back at it now and I think it laid a great foundation for me in terms of my values and kind of understanding my place really in the world. I myself was born in Jamaica, and came here when I was 6 to join my father who was already here. My father was basically a bus conductor and my mother was, stayed at home. I have another 6 siblings, my mother was very, very strict in the sense that she saw her faith as very important and that we should also be brought up in that way. She was a very kind loving person but her faith was extremely important to her and therefore to us, so, until I was about the age of 19 I was always you know in church and following a strict Christian path.

03:02 I did buy into it and actually I found it quite useful on reflection because growing in church we were part of a society within church and as a young person with all the other young people I was a bit of a leader so, I always had the opportunity to get up in front of people and speak I was preaching at the age of 15 to audiences of, like 2,000 people and then I decided to pursue a career in teaching.

03:36 She felt very disappointed that I didn’t want to continue doing what I’d done in church and so on, so, over time we had lots of heated arguments and discussions but actually I left to go to university and went away to Manchester so that was, that was good, getting away from all the people that had connections with me and knew me as somebody that was a leader in church.

04:06 End