Wood Family Trust to support developing countries and young people
Howard Lake | 13 September 2007 | News
The Wood Family Trust was launched today with plans to invest £50m over the next five to 10 years in charitable activities to improve economic activity and livelihoods in developing countries, and help the development of young people in Scotland and the rest of the UK.
Launched by the Wood Family, including Sir Ian Wood and Lady Helen Wood, the trust will focus on three specific areas.
- To facilitate and support schemes of self-help and lifelihood development in developing countries. It will look particularly at encouraging long term solutions to poverty, disease, famine and social deprivation, through, for example, supporting sustainable agriculture and fisheries, enterprice and business development. This will take up around three-quarters of the annual investment.
- It will encourage young people in the UK to volunteer overseas and broaden their horizons.
- It will promote achievement, well-being, education, employability and career potential of young people in Scotland, with a focus on the vulnerable.
Sir Ian Wood said: The family has planned this charitable trust for a long time. There is a huge imbalance between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ around the world, and globalisation, which the Wood Group has embraced, must also mean acceptance of responsibility to improve the economic well-being and livelihood of the many very poor nations. Additionally, we would like to encourage the young people in Scotland and the UK to maximise their potential.
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Applications to the trust vary for the three investment programmes. The Livelihood in Developing Countries programme will be by invitation only, but the other two programmes will be an open application process based on a two-stage approach. All guidelines are on the trust’s website.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.