HOW WE OPERATE

WHO ARE WE? Workaid is a registered charity set up in 1986. We have just one fulltime paid member of staff - our administrator Bill Duperouzel - and a part-time fundraiser. The rest of our team, including our management committee, office staff, workshop staff and overseas co-ordinators, are all volunteers.
WHAT DO WE DO? From our headquarters in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, we collect unwanted tools and equipment through a network of 100 area organisers around the UK. The items are refurbished by a team of around 170 volunteers at our workshop and shipped to approved training projects, mostly in East Africa.
WHO DO WE HELP? Donated equipment is sent to a wide range of training and employment-generating schemes run by schools, polytechnics, churches, women's groups, and self-help groups for disabled people, HIV/AIDS sufferers and refugees. Hand tools are used to teach skilled trades such as carpentry, masonry, car maintenance and leatherwork. Sewing and knitting machines enable women to set up small businesses at home and typewriters are used to teach secretarial skills. We also supply horticultural tools to small-scale farming schemes and Gestetner duplicators to rural schools without electricity.
HOW DO WE DELIVER? Our operation is concentrated in Kenya and Uganda, where we work in partnership with local NGOs which assess projects for us and distribute donated goods. Most equipment is sent in bulk in shipping containers, but we also send individual consignments to projects in other parts of East Africa and worldwide through other charities.
HOW ARE WE FUNDED? We make every effort to keep our operational costs to a minimum and are grateful to the companies which make a huge contribution by providing goods and services free: GE Healthcare, which provides our office and workshop; Northern Containers Ltd, of Leeds, which donates our shipping containers; The Entertainer Group which stores the containers; Adair Cargo Services which provides freighting at cost and British Airways which offers free flights. However, we still rely on the generosity of supporters to meet our running costs of £150,000 each year. Donations are received from trust funds, aid agencies, churches, community organisations, schools, companies and thousands of individuals. It is this on-going support which has fuelled Workaid's considerable growth over the last 20 years and which we hope will enable us to improve the lives of even more disadvantaged people in 2006.
WHAT HAVE WE ACHIEVED? In 2005, Workaid sent 933 sewing machines, 586 typewriters, 235 knitting machines, 31 duplicators, 507 tool kits and 210 miscellaneous items to 148 projects in Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, the UK and Zambia.
Since 1986, we have supplied over 168,000 items to 1,356 training projects in 49 countries worldwide. With an average of 30 individuals involved in each project, this means that we have directly improved the lives of more than 40,500 of the world's poorest people. And the benefits don't stop there: when an individual is earning a living, they can not only support their own families but feed income and services back into their communities, creating more employment and giving even more people the opportunity to build better lives for themselves.