There are 6 unpaid UK trustees -

David John Dixon:

David is the founder of Village Water and is a chartered civil engineer with degrees in hydraulics and hydrology. Most recently he was self-employed in construction waste and property development in Britain and Italy.  David's Telford-based waste company won the West Midlands Innovation Award. He has twice been a guest at a Royal Garden Party, firstly when he was invited to represent business and then through his service as a Mentor to candidates of the Princes Trust. Recently, David and his wife Annice won the Achievements Awards in the UK's Landlord Of The Year Show 2009 for their work in housing large and vulnerable, low-income families.

Guy Hudson:

Guy is chair of trustees of Village Water UK. He has degree in Physics with Economics. His career has spanned vehicle engineering and IT management and consulting. He has been CIO and programme manager for large international  software developments and implementations. He is the founder chair and active member of the UK Dowsing Research Group and has served as trustee of the British Society of Dowsers. He is an experienced water utility and health dowser and founder trustee of Village Water. His project management and engineering experience has been useful in assisting Village Water, particularly as his knowledge and understanding of  Zambian society has grown. He is focussed on taking Village Water forward with a balanced and highly competent board of trustees, each with their own area of responsibility.
 

John Irwin:

After a childhood in Ireland, the West Indies and Nigeria, and schooling in England, John went to university in Trinity College Dublin. He then became one of the founding members of Canning, the international training and development company, based in London.   Dealing with every aspect of the management of a people-based business from its inception was a tough, thorough and practical training. Canning grew from six staff and one centre in the mid-60’s to 140 staff world-wide with 6 centres in the UK, Italy and Japan by the late 80’s.

While still maintaining a close relationship with Canning and being a founder and active member of its charitable trust, John has been an independent consultant since 1995.  His voluntary work includes serving on the board of the Vitiligo Society for several years and being its Deputy Chairman.

As an active member of The British Society of Dowsers since 1994, he has been a member of their Council since 2003. Through the BSD, John met David Dixon as he was developing the concept of Village Water and The Canning Trust was then able to contribute to its funding.  John first went out to Zambia to see the work of Village Water in 2005. Since then he has been very actively involved and has become one of its founder trustees and directors. He makes regular field visits to Zambia to monitor progress and work with the team there. He is currently responsible for the design and implementation of a multi-user database for the whole organisation.

Richard Pither:

Richard is a Norfolk based former chartered surveyor and businessman who first came to Village Water as a funder and member of Rotary International.

On leaving school he trained as a livestock auctioneer and land agent before qualifying as a Chartered Building Surveyor and then building up his own practice.  His experiences in construction taught him the importance of good project management and cost control.  Subsequently he founded Suffolk Secrets, a successful holiday cottage agency that now provides the largest selection of quality holiday cottages in Suffolk.

On the sale of this business he was able to devote more time to his Rotary interests.  As president of his home club he decided upon Village Water as the chosen project for his year of office.  This was after his first fact finding trip to Zambia and a sponsored parachute jump to start his fundraising.  In that first year he achieved a US$68,000 sponsorship for Village Water supported by clubs throughout East Anglia and by funding from The Rotary Foundation.  Similar fundraising followed in subsequent years and over a 3 year period his projects delivered over US$150,000 to Village Water, sufficient to fund the water and sanitation for 43 rural communities.  Since water and sanitation are always high priority for Rotary clubs he aims to encourage more support for Village Water from other Rotary Districts in the British Isles.

He is currently the international officer and water co-ordinator for Rotary in East Anglia.  He is also a charter member of WASRAG (The Water and Sanitation Rotary Action Group), an international grouping of Rotarians involved in providing water in developing countries.

As a Village Water trustee his prime interest is to ensure that the new water installations, combined with the sanitation and the hygiene training deliver long term benefits to the recipient communities.  He feels that Village Water Zambia are well placed to achieve these aims because their local staff have established high levels of community involvement as well as strong links with the authorities in the areas that they serve. Read more about Rotary's partnership with Village Water.

Jane Thurnell-Read:

Jane Thurnell-Read is a former university lecturer in sociology and management studies. She worked as a volunteer English teacher at a teacher training college in Botswana from 1969 to 1971.For over 20 years she worked as a complementary therapy practitioner. She also taught students and therapists in USA, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Russia, as well as the UK. She has published 6 books and written numerous articles on health and therapies, as well as being interviewed on the radio and television. She has a very successful business selling testing kits to therapists worldwide and also an online health shop (Health & Goodness) for the general public. She has been a committed supporter of water charities for many years. Within Village Water she seeks to represent the views of individual donors rather than larger organisations and charitable trusts. She is also closely involved with the development and improvement of the Village Water web site.

Hugh Boam Woodhouse:

Hugh was born in County Down,  Northern Ireland. After studying at  Dublin University he worked as a UN volunteer in the Sudan, then moved to Canada and qualified as a Chartered Accountant.  On his return to the UK he worked in public accounting before moving to the Commonwealth Development Corporation where  he worked as a financial analyst for Loan and Investment Officers.  He moved to Standard Chartered Merchant Bank as Deputy Chief Accountant and, following a merger with another bank, transferred internally to the Project Advisory Group. Following redundancy he joined the Bank of Nova Scotia working as a Financial Analyst and Advisor in their European & Asian Treasury support group in London. He was transferred to  Singapore to set up the Scotia Capital’s Regional Treasury Risk Management and latterly adding the trading aspect of the Asian regional branch network. On completion of that assignment he returned to London to continue monitoring each Asian groups’ trading risk from London. Since then he has worked in several London charities in a programme finance role.  Hugh is responsible for finance and accounting within the charity.