Janie Oliver: ‘Parenting definitely won’t be what you expect but if you let yourself, you’ll find joy and magic in places you won’t anticipate.’

CEO of Stewardship, Janie Oliver, reflects on how her upbringing helped shape who she is today including her parenting

Janie, tell us what your early life was like, you grew up in South Africa?

So, yes, my early years were in apartheid South Africa, which was an interesting time to be alive. I remember Mandela being released in 1990 and our first democratic election in 1994. I was at primary school as integration started, and we had our first non-white child. It was a seminal time. I was young and didn’t really understand all of what was going on, but you could feel how exciting it was for the country at the time and just how amazing it was that it was such a peaceful transition.

South Africa was and remains a very unequal society and I think my early experiences of poverty and injustice around me have driven me to focus on those issues ever since. When you grow up with great need and injustice so close all the time, you can’t help but be profoundly impacted by it and it has clearly influenced my life including my career path.

Did you grow up going to church? Were your parents Christians?

Yeah, I grew up going to a relatively traditional Anglican church. It’s funny because my dad had a role in the church that included dealing with the collection and I used to …