October 2006

What began as a Reuters Leadership exercise for Senior Management in Geneva and London turned into a full team fundraising initiative to raise £20,000 to educate youngsters in Africa. Inspired by the Lifeline's success at educating children in Zambia, the Reuters Customer Services senior management team agreed to focus their leadership development experience to support the work of Lifeline Energy.

The teams worked intensively throughout National Giving Week in October and raised enough money to send 500 Lifeline radios to Zambia, for use in education and healthcare projects.

Lifeline Energy and its local partner organisation, the Quality Education Services Through Technology (QUESTT) work with the Zambian Ministry of Education to provide education via Lifeline radios to orphans and other vulnerable children in remote communities who cannot find places in conventional schools. There are currently 910 centres run by communities in which over 70,000 children are listening to the radio broadcasts. More than 35% of these children are orphans, many as a result of the AIDS epidemic.

A video of the Lifeline radio in schools in Zambia was featured on Reuter's giant Jumbotron at Canary Wharf and the team came up with inventive ways to help their colleagues part with their money: from dress down day, fines for using the lift, or listening to radio, to a lively event at which everyone bet on pre-recorded horse races.

Two Lifeline radios were auctioned in December - the highest bidder was able to add a personal message on the radios, which went out to Zambia.