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Since receiving his lifeline radio last year, "I have learned about AIDS and how I can stop
from getting malaria by using mosquito netting," says Jonathan Macuni, 13, who lost his parents and seven
of his 10 siblings to what he calls "illness."
So valuable are these radios - produced by the Freeplay
Energy Group, the technology firm run by Pearson's husband, South African entrepreneur Rory Stear - that
children elsewhere in Africa have eagerly traded weapons for them. "I?m in awe of the power and empowerment
it represents," says Tom Hanks, one of the high profile fans of Pearson and the charitable Freeplay
Foundation she heads. "The radio can change the world one life, one house, one village at a time."
The foundation has certainly transformed Pearson's life. "I probably would never have been hired for
this job I created," admits the fortysomething Californian, who was working in Johannesburg as a bank
executive when a mutual friend introduced her to husband-to-be Stear in 1993. Five years later, when
he began setting up a foundation - "successful South Africans of my age have inherent guilt that needs
to be worked through," says Stear, now 45 - he could not find the right person to run it. Pearson
happened to be free, and let herself be talked into spending three months to get the nonprofit off
the ground.
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