About Us
Avonbrook Projects Abroad supports education in the developing world through the provision of grants for long-term sustainable projects.
People
David Maddock Chairman
David is a practicing solicitor at Clarke Willmott LLP and holds an MA in Modern History from the University of Oxford.
He has been involved with the Charity from its inception and has a keen interest in the developing world, having previously travelled in southern Africa.
He is also the Charity Chairman.
Michael Amherst Chief Executive
Michael Amherst is a writer of fiction and non-fiction. His work has been published internationally, including the Guardian, New Statesman, the Spectator, The White Review and Contrappasso magazine. He has been shortlisted for the 2012 Bridport Prize and longlisted for the 2014 BBC Opening Lines and 2015 Bath Short Story Prize. Michael has also read his fiction at Stroud Short Stories, the inaugural London LitCrawl and the Accidental Festival at London’s Roundhouse.
Michael is currently undertaking a PhD on outsiders and ‘truth’ in the fiction of J.M. Coetzee and Marilynne Robinson at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Previously, he was UK Programme Director at JUST DETENTION INTERNATIONAL, an organisation campaigning against sexual violence in prisons across the globe. He served on the charity’s Board of Directors 2012-14, and rejoined in 2015. In addition, from 2012-15 he served as a Commissioner on the HOWARD LEAGUE‘s Independent Commission on Sex in Prisons.
He founded the charity Avonbrook Projects Abroad in 2007 and became the Charity’s CEO in 2009.
Peter Diamond Trustee
Peter is a writer, lecturer and stage director who, since deciding to work less hard in 2002, has travelled and researched widely, especially in the developing world where he has spent time teaching both adults and children everything from English, music and dance to making mud huts.
Rosemary Diamond Trustee
Rosemary was a teacher of English for twenty years; she has taught both in this country and B.Ed students in Hong Kong. More recently, she took on voluntary work in Mocambique and Madagascar. She has travelled widely, particularly in the developing world and when she is not doing that works at home as a counsellor with particular interest in eating disorders.
Simon Kirby Trustee
After a decade in the I. T. industry, Simon embarked on a ‘six month career break’ as Project Development Manager at Akany Avoko Children’s Home, in Madagascar. This initial ‘six months’ became six years, offering the opportunity of a lifetime to develop hands-on experience of project management, sustainable development, income generation and social care in the developing world. Now living back in the UK, Simon works as a Development Consultant offering advice and support to charities in the use of technology to improve profile, efficiency and revenue.
Simon became a Trustee of Avonbrook Projects Abroad in 2011.
Sarah Teacher Trustee
Sarah Teacher joined Avonbrook Projects Abroad as a Trustee in 2009.
Sarah is a Consultant at Sancroft International, an international sustainability consultancy. She works on the social, environmental and ethical risks faced by major businesses in their supply chains, operations, and consumer base. She specializes in working with food producers and retailers, and in particular works to support improved performance on responsible sourcing and food businesses’ response to global obesity.
Sarah joined Sancroft after completion of On Purpose, a one-year program for early-career professionals identified as future leaders in social enterprise. Prior to On Purpose, Sarah was Director for Next Generation Philanthropy at the Institute for Philanthropy, leading workshops in the UK, US, Rwanda, China and Turkey for philanthropists interested in increasing the impact of their giving.
She graduated from Lady Margaret Hall College, Oxford, in 2005 with a first-class degree in Modern History, and obtained her MPhil in Development Studies from Clare College, Cambridge in 2011.
She co-founded the African Innovation Prize, an organization that works to stimulate local student entrepreneurship in Rwanda (2011-2014, now part of the African Entrepreneur Collective); and sits as a board director at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, the world’s leading philanthropy advisory service.
Baroness Neuberger Patron
Baroness Neuberger DBE was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge and Leo Baeck College, London. She became a rabbi in 1977, and served the South London Liberal Synagogue for twelve years, before going to the King’s Fund Institute as a Visiting Fellow. She was at Harvard Medical School in 1991-1992, Chairman of Camden & Islington Community Health Services NHS Trust from 1993 until 1997 and then Chief Executive of the King’s Fund, an independent health charity until 2004. She has been a member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, the Medical Research Council and the General Medical Council, a Trustee of the Runnymede Trust and the Imperial War Museum (until 2006). Until recently she was also a Trustee of the British Council and of Jewish Care and remains a Trustee of the Booker Prize Foundation as well as a founding trustee of the Walter and Liesel Schwab Charitable Trust, in memory of her parents. She is currently chairing the Commission on the Future of Volunteering, is President of Liberal Judaism, and has recently been appointed the Prime Minister’s Champion for Volunteering.
She is the author of several books on Judaism, women, healthcare ethics and on caring for dying people, and most recent book, ‘The Moral State We’re In’, was published in March 2005. At present she is working on a book on old age.
She was created a Life Peer in June 2004 (Liberal Democrat) and was Bloomberg Professor of Divinity at Harvard University for the Spring Semester 2006.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester Patron
Celia Thomas was born (in 1945) and brought up in Winchester where she worked, among other places, at the Cathedral’s Choir School, and raising money for the Cathedral.
She was a founding member of the Winchester Liberal Party in the 1960s, and was an election agent there in October 1974, and in 1987 and 1992 in Brecon and Radnor.
She worked in the Commons for the Liberal Party Leader, Jeremy Thorpe from 1975-76, and from 1977 to 2005 she was head of the Liberal, then Liberal Democrat Whips’ Office in the House of Lords and is a recognised expert on Lords’ procedure. She was made a Life Peer in April 2006.
For three years she was a member of the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee (voted Committee of the Year 2007), and Liaison Committee. She is now (June 2010) Chairman of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, and a member of the Procedure Committee. She retains an interest in her former spokesmanship of Work and Pensions, having helped gain concessions in in the most recent Welfare Reform Act. She actively campaigns on disability issues.
She is Honorary President of the Winchester Liberal Democrats; Vice-President of the Lloyd George Society, a Vice President and Trustee of the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign and Patron of Avonbrook Projects Abroad.
Celia is also a Patron of the Winchester Churches Nightshelter, and of Thrive (a charity helping disabled people to discover gardening).
In 2015 she was made Liberal Democrat Disability Spokesperson.
Her interests range from music to butterfly conservation, but sadly increasing disability due to muscular dystrophy means that she can no longer participate in choirs or in dashing about the countryside as she used to.