Pauline Hoffman: Formidable fundraiser whose vision shaped Tape Aids for the Blind

1936-2016

PAULINE Hoffman, who has died in Durban at the age of 80, was the national director of Tape Aids for the Blind and made it the largest reading service for blind people in the southern hemisphere.

She joined the organisation in 1980 as international liaison officer and was then put in charge of development, public relations and fundraising.

Tape Aids for the Blind never received a cent from the government and was entirely dependent on donations. Using her considerable organisational skills, business acumen and extensive network of international contacts, Hoffman became a formidable fundraiser.

One of the first needs she identified was audio books for students.

She recruited volunteers from schools and universities to read textbooks, tutorial material and prescribed works which she persuaded these institutions to make available in advance so that students would have the audio material they needed at the beginning of each academic year.

She visited universities and colleges throughout South Africa including the Mamelodi campus of the University of Pretoria and the University of the North, where she found a crying need for audio books on academic PERSUASIVE: Pauline Hoffman tapped into her extensive network of international and local contacts to raise funds subjects.

She visited hospitals to assess the needs of blinded soldiers and accident victims, and ensured that Tape Aids for the Blind met them. She visited old-age homes, hospices and prisons — wherever she felt there might be a need for audio books to bring comfort and solace.

In 1989, when she became national director, she expanded its footprint well beyond the headquarters in Durban to branches in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Pretoria, East London, Port Elizabeth and Bloemfontein. By the time she retired in 2012 there were 12 branches and numerous satellites around the country.

As much as it depended on private donations, Tape Aids for the Blind also depended on a steady supply of welltrained and talented volunteer readers.

Hoffman ensured they were carefully selected and rigorously auditioned. Many volunteered, few were chosen, among them radio personalities, priests, lecturers, actors and actresses. She established a satellite campus in Knysna to make it convenient for the many retired thespians living there to read for Tape Aids.

She began recruiting readers in Afrikaans and African languages. Wherever possible voices were cast and matched to the content and style of the books being read.

When she retired there were more than 800 volunteers reading for Tape Aids, and more than 60 000 titles available to its members. She expanded the number and quality of recording studios from three under-equipped studios in Durban to 27 stateof-the-art studios around the country, including three on the Mamelodi campus of the University of Pretoria.

At these world-class studios her army of well-trained volunteers read an ever-expanding range of books including the classics, bestsellers, thrillers, poetry, biographies, religious literature and books on personal development, history, philosophy, astronomy and nuclear physics.

Hoffman was born in Springs on the East Rand on March 10 1936. She matriculated at Johannesburg Girls’ High School and obtained a BA honours degree in communication through Unisa.

After joining Tape Aids she travelled extensively to build up and maintain an international network of contacts and donors.

She visited the US, the Netherlands and Britain to investigate advances in the technology, production and distribution of audio books and issues of copyright.

She attended conferences of the International Federation of Library Associations, visited the Library of Congress in the US and was in Russia when Mikhail Gorbachev was overthrown. When she saw how bad conditions were she wondered why the West had been so afraid of Russia for so long.

After she gave a keynote address in Australia, donors shipped a large consignment of audio books to South Africa for distribution by Tape Aids.

Hoffman was the first woman to become president of Rotary in Durban.

She is survived by her son, Darryl, and daughter, Tracy, both of whom live in the US. Her husband of 57 years, Ralph Hoffman, died in 2013. — Chris Barron

She went wherever she felt there might be a need for audio books

espouses for most women.”

Shortly before her death Schlafly expressed her allegiance to Donald Trump.

Phyllis Stewart was born on August 15 1924 in St Louis, Missouri. After graduating from Washington University she was awarded a scholarship to Radcliffe College, where she was awarded an MA in political science.

She married Fred Schlafly, a lawyer, in 1949, after which she gave up her job and devoted herself to political causes and to her family.

She worked for Senator Joseph McCarthy in the early ’50s. In 1958 she established, with her husband, the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation “to combat communism with knowledge and facts”.

Schlafly was involved in many other campaigns, occasionally incurring even Republican wrath. When the Reagan administration tried to introduce Aids education into US schools in the 1980s, she described it as “the teaching of safe sodomy”.

She is survived by six children. — © The Daily Telegraph, London