Jacqueline Fogg: A onetime Montessori teacher in Manhattan who went on to play an important role in South Africa at the time of its historic transformation

The Atwater at Nocatee will host Jacqueline Fogg at the Getting to Know You forum at 11 a.m. April 30. Residents, guests and the general public are invited. For any further information, call 904-320-1056.

In the 1980s, her mother, Josephine Fogg — possibly inspired by her daughter’s work in education — visited a school in the village of Kafue, not far from the Zambian capital of Lusaka. She and her husband had been living in that area for a few years. She quickly saw how inadequate the school was and became determined to build a new one.

And she was not shy about raising funds for it.

“She literally walked around the city of Lusaka and banged on embassy doors demanding money from all these ambassadors — and they all gave it to her!” her daughter said.

In 1986, Jacqueline Fogg visited her mother in Zambia and then returned to Africa the following year.

“I went to Africa for three weeks, and I stayed 25 years,” she said. “In that time, I worked under the Apartheid regime, writing and producing educational TV programs for the disenfranchised populations of South Africa.”

She saw firsthand the disparity between the way white and black populations were treated. Her budget was one-sixth the size of funding provided for white residents’ programming. Still, she produced 186 educational TV programs in the Zulu language.

This had a profound effect, even on her translator, who “would sit and watch the rushes with me, and she would cry. She said, ‘They’re learning.’”

Her programs were greatly successful and won awards. In fact, in the years since, Fogg has gone on to make several movies.

Concluding this chapter in her life, Fogg went on to work as a contractor with the U.S. Department of State in the early ‘90s working with a program headed by former chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell. That’s when Fogg remembered her mother’s school, wondering whatever had become of it.

“I went there, and the school had just flourished,” she said. “Today, those kids have been to universities. Some of them are teachers. They have been to the United States, and my mother’s honored in that village.”

Fogg was also a witness in 1994 to South Africa’s implementation of universal suffrage.

“What was so sad was: the previously disenfranchised population, they’d never voted. Ever,” Fogg said. “So, you would have long lines of people registering to vote. And when the official vote came, they thought they’d all voted. So, they had to go back and line up for another 15 hours. They came in wheelbarrows and they came walking through the hills, and it was just the most extraordinary thing I’d ever seen.”

Fogg was subsequently invited to President Nelson Mandela’s inauguration reception.

Asked what had started her down this path, Fogg replied, “Sometimes you just get a pull to do things in life.”

Jacqueline Fogg is now living and thriving in Ponte Vedra, at The Atwater at Nocatee, and has started her own woman-owned small business specializing in government contracting and education.

The name of her company is Cumbria Contracting. Learn more at Cumbriacontracting.com.

The presentation is open to the public, and Fogg encouraged people from the community to attend. She plans to do a Q&A after the presentation.

The Atwater is located at 48 Pine Shadow Parkway, Ponte Vedra. For anyone wanting to attend a resident presentation, most of the parking at The Atwater is located around the back side of the building.

Read more of Jaqueline's story at The Recorder.