By KAREN MILLER
This September, Helen Lieberman received the 2026 Stephen R. Covey Principle-Centered Leadership Award, an international recognition of a lifetime of leadership.
There is something particularly appropriate about the award coming to someone whose idea of leadership has never been about standing at the front of the crowd.
For Helen, leadership has always been about enabling other people to take responsibility for ensuring their own and their communities’ futures.
More than 60 years ago, as a young Capetonian newly graduated, at the height of apartheid and without any awards to her name, Helen went into Langa. There she joined women who were already working to improve their communities. The commitment she made to them formed the beginnings of Ikamva Labantu, the NGO that she founded. It was a model of community work based on a deceptively simple idea: ordinary people can create extraordinary change when they decide to take responsibility for their communities.
That principle has remained at the heart of Helen’s leadership. The Covey award, established in 2019 by the Stephen R. Covey Leadership Center at Utah State University’s Jon M. Huntsman School of Business, recognises leaders who demonstrate character, competence and service-oriented leadership.
Helen herself is quick to move the spotlight elsewhere: “This award may carry my name, but the story has never been about one person.” It belongs, she says, to the women who opened their communities and their lives to her and showed her what could happen when people stepped forward and took responsibility for one another. That instinct, to recognise the people who are often overlooked, is one of the most distinctive features of her leadership.
Today, Ikamva Labantu continues to work in precisely this way. Its Early Childhood Development (ECD) programme trains and supports principals and practitioners in under-resourced communities, strengthening the quality, leadership and sustainability of community-based early learning centres. Helen has consistently argued that such community leaders should not be regarded as marginal figures. She has particularly highlighted the women running township early childhood centres, insisting that they are not simply ‘volunteers’, but professionals, educators and guardians of the future. They need training, funding, infrastructure and dignity.
It is a philosophy that reaches beyond early childhood development. Ikamva Labantu also supports older people in township communities, reflecting the organisation’s broader commitment to strengthening the people and structures that already exist within communities. Its work also looks to the future, providing safe and stimulating havens for children after school.
“Across Cape Town’s township communities, remarkable people are stepping forward every day,” said Ishrene Davids, Director of Ikamva Labantu. “They are opening early learning centres, supporting neighbours and building stronger communities. Helen’s story reminds us that the future is in our hands.”
The Covey award is not simply another honour in a long list. It is specifically about principle-centred leadership: the character, competence and service-oriented principles that shape the way a person leads. In Helen’s case, that makes it an especially fitting recognition, because her particular form of leadership has always been about bringing other people into the work rather than placing herself at its centre.
The visit by representatives and Fellows of the Covey Leadership Center to Ikamva Labantu’s ECD training centre in September therefore had a satisfying symmetry. The people coming to honour an internationally recognised leader met another generation of local changemakers, the principals and practitioners who are quietly building stronger beginnings for children in their own neighbourhoods.
Helen is no stranger to awards. Over the years, her work has been recognised with an impressive array of South African and international honours: the Order of the Disa; an honorary doctorate from the University of Notre Dame; the 2008 Roger Joseph Prize for her humanitarian work through Ikamva Labantu; the 2008 Absa Jewish Achiever Humanitarian Award; and, in 2017, France’s Officier de la Légion d’Honneur.
Each recognised a different aspect of a remarkable contribution to humanitarian work, service to disadvantaged communities and the building of community-based organisations.
The Stephen R. Covey Principle-Centered Leadership Award adds something different. It honours not only what Helen Lieberman has achieved, but how she has led: by recognising ability where others might not see it, by giving grassroots leaders the tools and support to develop their own communities, and by understanding that leadership is ultimately about service.
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