Turns out Noella Coursaris is far more than just a pretty face. Speaking on the phone from her current residence in Munich, I’ve already come across dozens of pictures of the stunner sprawled across the net but just looking at them no-one would have a clue about what goes on in her life beyond the world of camera flashes and picture perfect make-up. As soon as we’ve said our “hellos”, it becomes apparent that there are a million and one things on her mind. A bit of multi-tasker, she really doesn’t seem to know what to do first.
Her six-month old baby is crying in the background, emails need to be dealt with from charity organisations that want to join forces with her on her missions in Africa and somewhere in between all this, modelling proposals come through for various high profile jobs. The half Cypriot, half Congolese 34-year-old who has made a name for herself in the world of international fashion is intent on given something back to the place where she was born.
Having spent her early years in Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Noella lost her Cypriot father George when she was only five years old. Going back in time she speaks of the day her Cypriot grandfather left Athienou to go to Africa, the day her father met her mother, and then, the day she was sent off to live with relatives in Europe because her mum just didn’t have the money to raise her after her dad passed away.
Moving around between relatives in Belgium and Switzerland, growing up for Noella was no easy business but she doesn’t dwell too much on the hard times. She was 18 before she saw her mother again and felt like she was meeting a “pure stranger” for the first time. “It made me a tougher person that’s for sure,” she says. “I learnt a lot through all my life experience and it made me the person I am today. Now that I’m a mother I realise what it meant not to have mine around. Parents and children have such a special bond, they can die for their own child.”
Things really kicked off career wise for Noella in her early twenties when she moved to London to learn better English. Approached by a number of modelling agencies, she started a career in modelling after “jokingly” enrolling in a competition for a campaign for famous lingerie brand, Agent Provocateur. Her success then took her to New York and it was in the Big Apple that she decided she just had to do something to help with the rather dire situation back home.
“I saw so much poverty when I went back to see my mother that I realised I had to take action,” she recalls. So she set up the Georges Malaika Foundation three years ago, the organisation named after her late father and the Swahili name for angel aims at providing education opportunities for Congolese girls. Having brought together a team of 20 volunteers from around the world as well as a small team of paid workers in Congo, the foundation is currently constructing a school in the village of Jakebuka as well as sponsoring a group of girls who have been abandoned, providing them with an orphanage, school tuition and food.
“Often when parents don’t want their children or find it hard to keep them they will throw them out and accuse them of conducting witchcraft. It’s so very sad,” she says. Funds are raised privately and through major donors, and the fact that she was born in the country means she has plenty of support through various local NGOs. “The problem is that everything is so expensive to construct because unfortunately so many things have to be brought in from abroad.”
Top priority for Noella is education, and she is particularly keen that girls and orphans need to manage themselves through education, giving them a voice politically, economically and socially. “The kids see me as a bit of role model and it’s very sweet. If you start working with them at a young age you can slowly implement new ideas.”
With the international media picking up on all her hard work, Noella has recently returned from a trip that saw her followed by a CNN crew, filming her work for a documentary that has recently been aired named African Voices. Besides the big current project with the village school, Noella is also bringing other foundations to come and work in Congo as well as inviting students and teachers from abroad to help change the educational system in the country.
And with that, Noella tells me she has a confession to make that has little to do with what we’ve just been talking about. “It’s just that I still haven’t been to Cyprus. I’d like to discover my roots. After all, people do say I have a Cypriot temper,” she says laughing. Hoping to come over to the island in the summer to hook up with family here that she has never met, the model certainly seems to be spreading her wings around the world.
How you can help
Provide one girl with a new pair of school shoes: $10
Sponsor a girl through school: $35 per month or $420 per year (includes shoes, school uniform)
Buy a desk and chair for a student: $75
Pay a teacher’s salary for one month: $350
Provide bread for all 100 girls for a year: $2,000
To donate visit: http://www.gmfafrica.org/donate/
