Ron Sutherland: Jim McPherson - Vine Trust

involvement with the Vine Trust. The Vine Trust is an international interdenominational volunteering charity which seeks to enable volunteers to make a real and significant difference to some of the poorest children and communities in the world. He began with a comprehensive rundown of the various projects that the Vine Trust is involved with. This can be from medical help on the R. Amazon to Lake Victoria as well as the work in house building in Tanzania. Further information can be had from their website at https://www.vinetrust.org.

Jim spoke about his own involvement in the organisation which has been the building of houses for the poorest of the poor people in a community in Tanzania. He showed the houses that some people live in and then showed the stage by stage building of the new accommodation.

The projects that Jim has been involved with have been with various Scottish school groups both local to the Borders and from the NE of Scotland. With the labour of the young volunteers he has helped build a number of houses in the area he has visited. The actual building is done by skilled locals and the shifting of bricks, mixing cement and any other labour intensive tasks by the visiting group. He emphasised importance of the experience to the young people in that they learn so much about another culture, about themselves as a person and that life isn’t only about material possessions.

As well as the building project the groups that visit also get to go on some game drives in the game reserves and they can see a range of big game such as elephants, zebras and water buffalo.

He finished the presentation with the future plans of the Vine Trust in Tanzania which is building the Kazunza Village of Hope. Kazunzu Village of Hope will be a centre of excellence in providing a future, education and training, constructed on a piece of land to the West of Mwanza, on the shore of Lake Victoria in Tanzania.

He ended with a quote from the trust which was, “ we can’t help everyone but we can all help someone”.

The vote thanks was given by President Mairhi Trickett.