Dr taddy bleacher biography of michael

photo by Glenn Tucker�Taddy Blecher set up the first free university in South Africa and is regarded amongst the best public speakers in the world and one of the world's top young movers-and-shakers. He is still in his 30s and has had the backing of people like Nelson Mandela, Oprah Winfrey, Richard Branson.

Despite having no computers to use, students at South Africa?s first free university defied the odds and learned how to type at a speed that would leave many professionally trained operators in their wake.

The students, who would otherwise have appeared destined for a life of disempowerment on the fringes of society living in abject poverty, proved their worth using nothing more than photocopies of a computer keyboard to learn how to type.

And an audience in Bermuda heard how the students increased their keyboard typing speed by tapping away on their imaginary keyboards keeping time with music ? building up from Mungo Jerry?s ?In The Summertime? to speedier reggae classics by Bob Marley.

By the time the fledgling university ? built purely from the efforts of supporters and donators ? had managed to secure some actual computers, its paper-trained students were able to type away at secretarial-type speeds of 30 words a minute.

Against the odds, the students outperformed all their wealthier contemporaries in a contest to find the champion Microsoft Word and Excel users in Southern Africa, winning the opportunity to battle with the cream of European scholars.

Taddy Blecher is a shining beacon of miracles that are achievable.

He is the visionary who, less than seven years ago, helped create the CIDA City Campus in Johannesburg out of nothing and has seen South Africa?s first free university-level institution draw praise and backing from former South African President Nelson Mandela, TV celebrity Oprah Winfrey and world-famous business entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson.

Visiting Bermuda to present

Taddy Blecher – CEO of the Maharishi Institute, and creator of the world’s first model for a self-funding university – does not have a corner office.

He has a passenger seat, a Macbook on his lap, a phone wire forever dangling from his ear and a personal wifi hotspot that could only be located as a continuously moving dot along google maps. The worrying thing is that he used to do the driving part himself too.

∞

For a year, I had the privilege of bearing witness to him from backseat of his car, suspended within the ever-changing current of meetings. Every day, Taddy flows from the boardrooms of influential business leaders in South Africa, to the Department of Basic Education and Higher Education (since he was elected by the former Deputy President to head-up a National task team on entrepreneurship), to the Department of Trade and Industry (where he oversees inter-country deals between USAID, the South African government and local business vendors), to the campus that he runs at a nature reserve in Mpumalanga province, to the airport (when he is invited to win prizes in global education innovation), only pausing at vegetarian restaurants along every stop.

He does not stop eating. It all goes to his brain, because nearing 50, Dr. Taddy Blecher still looks like Harry Potter.

When I first became aware of what Taddy was doing, I felt an inexorable pull to meet the man behind the dream. What drove the fastest qualifying actuary in the country at the time, who was about to immigrate to the U.S.A., to stay behind and make a difference in South African education instead? He then went to work for four years in Alexander township schools, before moving on to create the first virtually-free university campus in South Africa, and most recently The Maharishi Institute – where hundreds of students from disadvantaged backgrounds are being awarded internationally recognised business degrees while simultaneously working part-time for three years

Taddy Blecher is a young South African with a great heart and a brilliant mind. In 1995, during one restless night of tossing and turning, he realized that his whole life had been dictated by fear of freedom.

A restless night that changed everything

At that moment, he was 28 years old. In spite of his humble and poor background – his grandparents had emigrated from Lithuania, fleeing the Soviet persecution with nothing but ‘shirts on their backs’ –, Taddy Blecher had graduated from university with flying colours.

He was earning remarkably good salary as a business consultant to mining companies. Moreover, he had a 130,000 USD job offer from the US on his table. In fact, he had already bought the plane tickets and stored all his accumulated belongings (“43 boxes altogether,” as he recalls) in his mom’s basement. He had made up his mind and was ready to go.

Yet he never did.

During that night of restless tossing and turning, he suddenly saw how the safety of a good career and personal success were dragging him away from his real passion – the love for his country, and for its people.

Most of all, for the 25 per cent of population who still lived their disadvantaged lives in the vicious circle of poverty and unemployment. “I saw aching poverty but also the greatest and most valuable resource: human potential,” Blecher says.

CIDA: Community and Individual Development Association

Taddy Blecher’s own experience had shown him: the quickest way out of this vicious circle was through acquiring good, marketable education. He decided to devote his life to making this opportunity available to as many poor South-Africans as possible.

The first step on this road was CIDA, the Community and Invididual Development Association

set up in Johannesburg, South-Africa’s 3rd biggest city. CIDA offers a 4-year Business Administation degree.

And it does so for free.

Taddy Blecher was the CEO of CIDA from its

Dr Taddy Blecher is a pioneer of the free tertiary education movement in South Africa. A man with a great vision, he believes that with an inwards-out approach to life, everyone has the ability to be successful.

A philanthropic social entrepreneur, also known as the transcendental crusader, who looks like Harry Potter, Blecher is a bubble of energy and abundance; and he is very, very smart. He has single-handedly transformed the face of development through education, by challenging conventional wisdom that only the elite are destined for power and wealth. He believes that it all comes down to the magic genius within each of us.

Blecher is an actuary by profession, and has applied his insights to creating a radical educational model to fill the gap in business education between matric and MBA-level qualifications. His basic philosophy is simple: if everyone gave something to someone else, no-one would need anything.

“Old economic theory posits that resources and labour are scarce and hence there is protectionism. In the new economy, the human mind is not limited. We live in an abundant universe.” Blecher believes everything we need is contained within the human mind and that education is there “to unlock peoples’ hearts and spirits – provide nourishment and remove obstacles”.

Humble beginnings

Blecher, wealthy, white and in his thirties, was ready to emigrate from South Africa when he took stock and realised that his home was where he was needed to make a difference. “I saw aching poverty,” he said, and he made a life-changing decision to do something about it. In 1999, he and his colleagues opened the Community and Individual Development Association (Cida) City Campus to give disadvantaged youths a chance to overcome hopelessness and earn a four-year business administration degree.

Starting out from his office in Johannesburg, without any university buildings, courses or