A 20 Year Crusade

In 1996, disillusioned with her with her career in the newspaper industry, Jane Walker headed over to the Philippines for a rethink about her future. What was supposed to be a short break ended up being the start of a brand new life.

Jane heard of the horrendous conditions in which families were living and working on rubbish dumps in Manila, and on arrival asked a taxi driver to take her to the worst slum areas he knew – so she could see for herself. It was the most pivotal moment of her life and the start of a 20 year crusade to try and help break the cycle of poverty through education, welfare and livelihood programs. After building the world’s first school out of recycled shipping container vans and transforming the lives of thousands of families, the charity is without question, a remarkable success.

Jane decided to return to the UK due to her sons ill health, confident that the Philippine project was now being equally funded by the UK and the Philippines. In 2015 funding was secured to pay the salary of a local CEO and Jane handed over the management of the school and charity to the local board of trustees.

This enabled Jane to work with some smaller groups of disadvantaged women in Tanzania and asylum seekers and refugees in Hampshire.

More recently the community in the Philippines asked Jane and her team to return to the slums of Manila and start some new programmes that help the wider community.

We are incredibly excited and passionate to be returning back to our roots and running community enhancement programmes.https://www.p-c-f.org/