Tools for Self Reliance

The Rotary Club of Malvern needs old/unwanted hand and power tools in support of the charity “Malver Hills Tools For Self Reliance” which has been training, equipping and supporting people in Uganda, Ghana,Sierra Leone,Malawi and Zambia since 1979.

Martin Blamire , the chair of Malvern Hills Tools for Self Reliance has kindly given us a brief overview of the organisation.

The Malvern Hills group began life in 2017, when three of us met to see how we could find a way to save good tools from being taken to the tip and instead send them to tradesmen and women in developing countries

The answer was to work with the charity Tools For Self Reliance, set up more than 40 years ago with the aim of refurbishing specific donated tools to projects in Malawi, Uganda, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Zambia and Tanzania. The TFSR website is well worth a look (www.tfsr.org).

There, local partner organisations make them available to craftsmen and women once they have completed a skills training course in carpentry, electrics, tailoring or construction for example. It is just about impossible to get quality tools in such remote areas so the refurbished, quality tools that we send are valued and cared for. Giving your unwanted tools a new life in a developing country: what could be better?

With help from Malvern Hills Trust, we quickly found a small workshop space and made our first call for local donations. The response was immediate and has continued unabated ever since. We are now a team of 8 volunteers who sort and clean the tools and send them down to Southampton, from where they are transported to projects in Africa. So far, we have sent many hundreds of tools as well as cheques for over £6500 from sales of unusual and surplus tools, which goes towards transport and training costs

What we most want are workshop tools, equipment and machines, as well as sturdy corded power tools (battery tools are not wanted). We also welcome donations of sewing machines, as just one quality machine can generate an income for a family, enabling the children to attend school

Further information available from Rotarian Jeremy Prideaux-Jackson on 07930251394 OR Martin Blamire on 01684 540491.