The Hantam Community Education Trust operates in one of South Africa’s poorest regions, most of its people eking out their livings on arid sheep farms. For generations of the region’s farm workers, South Africa’s political and social history has dictated a life of disadvantage.

People here endure the extremes of distance, climate and income. They live many miles from urban amenities, along desolate roads of gravel that reach all day to the horizon. But they never go short of heart.

It’s this high level of participation that strengthens the Trust. One of its guiding principles is never to employ a person without roots in the community. “If they’re not committed to a life here, we don’t know when they might leave,” say the project co-ordinators, “and then where would we be? Development is not bricks and mortar. People make the project.”