HRH attends Transaid showcase

Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal underlined the importance of creating sustainable development projects which can have lasting impact on communities, at Transaid’s annual showcase.

Guests at the event, hosted at law firm Eversheds London offices on Friday 23rd October, also heard the charity’s Royal Patron describe how important it is for organisations to measure the impact of their work.

The Princess Royal said: “It’s fundamentally important for any development agency to understand how to evaluate what they’re doing. It’s always been part of Transaid’s ethos to evaluate and I suspect that comes from the background of the sector.

“Unless you set out with that intention you’re not going to be able to make the argument that you are instituting a sustainable project that the local government will be able to take on and that’s crucial. It’s not about Transaid running programmes in the future, this is about building sustainable programmes that local communities can take over, wherever they are.”

During the showcase, Transaid team members shared the latest major achievements of its projects. In the 12 month period between 1st May 2014 and 30th May 2015, the charity’s emergency transport programmes in Uganda, Zambia, Madagascar and Nigeria recruited and trained over 1,200 volunteer emergency transport drivers, transported more than 8,800 people living in rural areas to healthcare facilities and equipped almost 500 community health workers with bicycles and training.

The MORE MAMaZ programme, which aims to increase the number of births attended by a trained professional and raise the numbers of women and infants reaching health facilities, has seen 25 per cent more women giving birth in hospital, more than 1,000 women using the emergency transport scheme and 22,000 pregnant or newly-delivered women visited by volunteer health workers.

Gary Forster, CEO of Transaid, took the opportunity to celebrate the fundraising efforts of the charity’s corporate supporters. He said: “We’ve had a successful year, particularly in terms of corporate support. We’ve welcomed nine new corporate members, and were the beneficiary charity at 24 industry events. Our Three Day Celtic Challenge held in September raised £53,000 and Cycle Tanzania in June raised an incredible £134,000 – the most we’ve ever raised in a single event.”

He added: “Support from the transport and logistics industry underpins our work in Africa. The funds we receive from our corporate supporters as well as their hard-earned expertise allow us to test new projects and expand our existing services to reach more people who really need them.

“I would like to commend our corporate supporters and ambassadors who have contributed an incredible amount and thank them for their continuing support.”

Image: Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal presents outgoing trustee Stewart Oades with a farewell gift on behalf of Transaid.