Nick Meyer (2 & 3 South, 1958-62) is the chairman of the Cranleigh Foundation board of trustees. Here he explains his motivation about why he is so committed to helping others and the importance of the Cranleigh Foundation’s work in supporting children who have suffered tragedy.
I left school at the age of 17 in July 1962 and started work in a timber company based in London. After a few months I was sent to work in the London docks at Millwall which at the time was one of the most deprived areas of London. There were some apprentices working there as well, some from relatively privileged backgrounds and some from poverty-stricken backgrounds.
Without going into detail, I very quickly learnt some fundamental lessons in life; for example, one young man had to share a pair of shoes with his brother, another was fairly illiterate but the company was supporting him to learn to read and write properly. You remember these lessons for the rest of your life.
Some 25 years ago the father of a young Cranleighan lost his life in very tragic circumstances leaving his family in a very difficult financial position. The young person concerned was in their last two years at School and I am proud to report that Old Cranleighans of all ages rallied to support the young person concerned in order to enable him to complete his education. I think that this is an early example of Foundationship as far as the School is concerned.
The Cranleigh Foundation was set up in 2007 and I was one of the original trustees, becoming chair of the board in 2016. Today the Cranleigh Foundation has a simple objective: it is to assist a certain number of young people who have suffered misfortune in their lives for a variety of reasons to obtain a rounded education at Cranleigh Prep and Cranleigh School. Through this assistance, we hope it will kick-start them on the road of life and their careers. So far, we have been quite successful in achieving this objective but in the main we have been restricted by the financial resources available to us.
What we wish to do is to establish and achieve an endowment which will allow us to make Foundation awards for 10 young people in perpetuity. To achieve this, we need to raise £10 million. We are well on our way to achieving this amount thanks to the generosity of parents, Old Cranleighans and friends of Cranleigh.