As trustee what is your role?
Treasurer, ensuring our financial oversight is robust and have adequate reserve funds to be prepared for unexpected programme or funding shocks such as Covid-19. I also work with financial team to regularly review our finance position and budgets.
What do you do when you are not supporting On Call Africa?
Investment management, I head up a team focused on investing in large infrastructure assets (for example: roads, fibreoptic networks and renewable energy projects), predominantly in Europe. Aside from that I love the great outdoors and hiking, climbing and nature geek stuff.
Why is On Call Africa important to you?
Working in the finance world it can be easy to lose touch with the impact that your work has on people’s lives. On Call Africa offers a way to contribute to work that has a very tangible impact on improving people’s lives. In turn that helps me focus on people in other aspects of my life, professional and personal.
What’s your favourite part of being involved in the charity?
The team is great. They are inspirational to work with.
Why should someone volunteer for On Call Africa?
They offer a way to contribute more directly to improving conditions on the ground in Zambia. Giving you the opportunity to see the impact of your support first hand. It’s impressive to see how much such a small team is capable of achieving.
Donations are key, what would be the impact without them?
Donations are nothing short of critical to the functioning of On Call Africa and to the organisation’s growth plans. As Treasurer my responsibility is ensuring there are sufficient funds available throughout the year to meet our programme needs. Without donations we would need to curtail our growth plans and look at winding down key activities. This would ultimately reduce the number of people that benefit from the healthcare access that On Call Africa facilitates.
As treasurer and financial analyst, what keeps you up at night?
The team haven’t given me too much to keep me up at night, yet…. Covid-19 has been tough on the role-out of planned clinics and fundraising has taken a hit. However, the team reacted quickly and thoughtfully and we are still able to help improve healthcare. What I would like to see is a further diversification of our funding sources – at the moment, losing any major grant or donor would make it impossible to maintain the existing great impact On Call Africa has.
To meet more of our fantastic team please click here.