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'This page has been approved by the United Grand Lodge of England’
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As you may recall, immediately following the disaster, the President of the Grand Charity authorised an Emergency Grant of £100,000 for the British Red Cross to air lift essential supplies to the worst affected areas. In addition, grants of £10,000 and £25,000 were made to the District Grand Lodges of Madras and Sri Lanka to assist them with their local relief work. In response to requests from the Craft, the Grand Charity opened a Relief Chest to receive donations from Masons who wished to support the relief efforts via a central Masonic Charity. I had originally thought that a few thousand pounds might be donated, so you can imagine my utter amazement as the thousands turned to hundreds of thousands. The Craft has been overwhelmingly generous and, as of the end of February, the Chest had received more than £850,000. Donations have come not only from Masons under the United Grand Lodge of England, but from around the world. One of many came from the Masonic Service Association of North America who contacted me for advice on suitable projects. Subsequently, the Association decided that the money that they had raised should be added to the Relief Chest to support the Grand Charity’s efforts. Of the total in the Relief Chest, more than £750,000 has been committed and we are evaluating several different options for the remaining funds. After careful consideration, as reported to Grand Lodge last March, the Council of the Grand Charity agreed that the Relief Chest funds should be used to support long term relief efforts for children orphaned or otherwise affected by the disaster. Following meetings in London with a number of child focussed charities and a due diligence visit to meet the local staff who would be managing projects in the field, the Grand Charity selected Plan as its delivery partner in India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. Plan is a child-centred community development organisation, working in 66 countries worldwide. A grant of nearly £320,000 for India is supporting child care centres, funding women’s self help groups and providing livelihood support for families in the fishing villages of Villapuram in Tamil Nadu. Thus far, 58 boats have been delivered, benefiting more than 230 families – boats that the local fishermen themselves helped to design in conjunction with the suppliers who had been selected through a rigorous competitive bidding process. To avoid the problem that at BT we used to call “shrinkage” off the back of an engineer’s van, Plan has ensured controls are in place so that boats are not sold or given away. The boats are owned, most wisely, by the women of the village, and a board has been erected in each village to display the names of the boat owners with registration and insurance details for each boat. Plan has a central database of the boats and local staff regularly monitor to ensure that no boats have gone missing. I travelled with Michael Turnbull from the Council of the Grand Charity, who went out to sea in one of our boats, and fortunately returned, but without any fish. We visited childcare centres, which provide a safe and stimulating environment for children to learn basic educational skills, receive training in hygiene and sanitation practices and have regular medical check-ups. Psychological counsellors help them to overcome the trauma of the tsunami and the children receive disaster preparedness training to help them with the all too frequent natural disasters of the developing world. The children were exuberant, vivacious and noisy, a far cry from their withdrawn stoicism of a year ago. I saw the products of several of the women’s self help groups, where women can gain much needed employment skills and the capacity, through the availability of micro-financing, to develop income generating activities. I would like to urge all of you to attend the Grand Charity’s General Meeting in London on June 21st to hear Bruno Oudmayer, the Director of Plan India, who will be speaking about the tsunami relief work. He is most impressive and Plan’s work in India is remarkable. In Sri Lanka, we visited the 22-acre site in Hambantota where construction work has begun to build a new school for 3,000 primary and secondary school students. The Grand Charity grant of £200,000 will contribute to the overall funding of £2m for the project. Plan’s philosophy of “building back better” will ensure that a much higher standard of education will be available to children in the region, who were consulted in the design of the new school The project is on schedule and on budget, with the primary school due to open in January 2007. In Indonesia the Grand Charity has agreed, in principle, a donation of £100,000 for a school to be built in the Aceh district. The loss of life and the scale of the devastation were so great in Indonesia that, when combined with the political instability of a country at war, the redevelopment efforts have progressed more slowly here than in the other countries. Plan is confident, however, that work on the school will begin later this year. I would like to finish by touching on the broader context of the tsunami relief work. You will all have read the widespread criticism of the inefficiency and waste of governments and international NGO’s in the efforts to help victims of this disaster. Boats without engines, boats not designed for the local fishermen’s needs, women and children marginalised and excluded from the decision making process. There are, however, many more examples of international NGO’s delivering much needed redevelopment initiatives, sensitive to local cultures and needs. I can assure you that with Plan the projects funded by the Craft are bringing tangible, measurable benefits for children whose lives have been devastated by this disaster. Of equal importance, the money given by the Craft is “building back better” infrastructure destroyed by the tsunami and thereby achieving lasting economic and social improvements for children and the communities in which they are growing up. On behalf of the Grand Charity and those who you are helping, thank you. |
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