Project Trust Update
In 2013 the JWT awarded a grant of £2,000 to Project Trust, to help four volunteers hit their fundraising targets. Project Trust is a wonderful organization, based on the Isle of Coll, which arranges 'gap year' opportunities focusing on educational voluntary charity work in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.
Project Trust was launched in 1967, sending three volunteers to Aba Hanna Jima School in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Over the years the numbers of volunteers and diversity of the projects have been magnified. We are thrilled to be receiving feedback from the volunteers who set out at the end of last year to embark on their 12 month, yet life changing, projects.
Precious to Senegal via the Project Trust
We received this warming e-mail from one of our beneficiaries. Precious Adesina has been working in Senegal teaching English & IT. Her work is part sponsored by the Jo Walters Trust via the grant we made in 2012 to the Project Trust. Precious has sent us a copy of her newsletter which you can read by clicking on the image to the right.
Dear Jo Walters Trust
Thank you so much for supporting me in fundraising to reach Senegal. It has been, and still is, an amazing experience. I profusely apologise for taking so much time to send you a letter, but our project doesn't give us much spare time other than when we are away. I was determined to send you something more exciting than a letter so I have made you a newsletter. I hope you like it.
If you would like any more information please let me know or check out my blog: itsjustprecious.blogspot.com.
Thanks,
Precious Adesina
'She Moves' Campaign
The Jo Walters Trust was pleased to end 2012 by giving a grant of £2,400 to the Women's Sport & Fitness Foundation to fund an ambassador for their new 'She Moves' campaign. The money we donated covered the induction and training course for a lady called Avril who will be the face of their campaign to try to get more 'normal' girls and women to be active. We felt that their aims were very much in line with ours, and that Jo would approve if we help more girls and women get active, as she got into sport despite school, rather than because of it. If you're interested in the area it's worth taking a look around their website, and you can follow the progress of Avril on Twitter through @Shemoves. Their website will have information about the Jo Walters Trust grant up shortly.
The Moldova Project
The Jo Walters Trust has made a grant of £2,000 to the Moldova Project, set up in 2008 with the aim of helping some of the most vulnerable people in Moldova. It became a registered Charitable Trust in 2011. The support they provide includes for the many children living in orphanages, as well as people living in extreme poverty in Moldova's remote villages. They try to support these people by providing financial help, such as by arranging sponsors for deprived families and funding projects in the orphanages. They also provide more practical support by arranging for children to go to school and for damaged houses to be repaired. The founders, Emma and Lucy are in their 3rd year at Bristol University, where Jo studied for her primary degree in Spanish and Russian.
The Project Trust, Coll
The Jo Walters Trust has made a grant of £2,000 to the Project Trust who are based on the Isle of Coll on the West Coast of Scotland. They send volunteers away to do worthwhile projects - teaching, social care, outward bound and journalism. All of the volunteer training happens on the Isle of Coll which they see as being the first challenge for a lot of the participants - making their way across Scotland! Whilst this is a 'Gap Year' opportunity for people, it offers considerable benefit to both the volunteers and the island community of Coll.
The Chauncy Maples Project
The Jo Walters Trust has given a grant of £3,500 to the Chauncy Maples Project, which is aimed at bringing health care to one of the poorest communities in the world by renovating Africa’s oldest motor ship, the "Chauncy Maples", based on Lake Malawi. The Trustees of JWT were concerned to find out that the life expectancy in Malawi is between 44 and 50 years and that the only real means of getting around the lake is still by dug-out canoe, risking the dangerous currents, storms and crocodiles.
According to Mark Holford, Director of the Chauncy Maples Project, poverty in the region is a huge problem with most of the population earning less than a 65 pence per day. The statistic that really stuck though, was that the under-five death rate is 111 per 1,000 live births. There simply is no real medical care in the region and only one doctor for every 52,000 people. The project aims to change all of this and the Chauncy Maples ship renovation will allow more people to have access to medical care – especially for those Malawians living along the lakeside who have little or no access to medical attention.
Working With Contact The Elderly
Contact the Elderly is a national charity which aims to alleviate acute loneliness among isolated, older people, aged 75 and above, by organising free monthly Sunday afternoon tea parties for small groups of older people.
Since the charity was established in 1965, they have helped more than 100,000 lonely older people living in England, Scotland and Wales. Contact the Elderly currently supports nearly 3,800 older people every month, with the help of over 6,000 volunteers.
A donation of £2,000 from the Jo Walters Trust will be used towards the development and training of volunteers, and in particular will enable the creation of a new North & West Bristol group, which one of our Trustees will be leading.
Bristol OTC Prize 2012
A prize for the Officer Cadet in Bristol OTC who does the most for charity or the community.
The winner, Daniel Wilkins received £100. Daniel wrote:
The driving force behind my support for Wallace and Gromit's Grand Appeal stemmed from one of my medical student placements: I spent 3 months working at St Michael's hospital in Bristol, which is home to the neonatal intensive care unit, which looks after some of the sickest infants from across the South West and Wales. Here I saw the real need for charity support to what the NHS can provide. Not only in terms of medical equipment, but support to families too during what is often one of the most stressful times of their lives. Later on in the year I then spent a placement at Bristol Children's Hospital, where the charity's work was very evident.
To raise money for the charity I organised a 10 kilometre sponsored fun run and LandRover pull for members of the OTC - it happened to take place on a very wet afternoon so the sponsorship was hard earned for the competitors!
I also organised a sponsored skydive for 10 members of the OTC and had an ongoing collection in the form of a pot for loose change on the bar. In total we raised nearly £4000. Looking ahead I am now heading up the OTC's fundraising for another year - this time with three charities to support across the year.
