Furniture for Education Worldwide (F.E.W), Judy Buksmann

“Furniture for Education Worldwide (F.E.W) is a very new charity, registered in October 2008 and inspired by the Government’s “Building Schools for the Future” initiative. When the local authority in Lancashire began to implement the BSF scheme, they realised that they had an opportunity to do another good deed at the same time. Rather than send the old desks, computers and educational equipment straight to landfill in the UK, one of our local Councillors (Terry Burns) suggested finding a way to recycle and re-use these things.

With advice and legal guidance from the Charity Commission (who I’ve always found to be incredibly helpful and personable), alongside support from local businesses, we’ve made use of existing links with schools in India, Pakistan, Zimbabwe and Ghana. We’ve started shipping unwanted equipment out to schools that really need it – schools that are struggling to provide even tables and chairs for their children at the moment.

From the start of this project, we were working to very tight deadlines – the official launch date had already been set at the Houses of Parliament and we’d filled out all the relevant forms with only a week to spare. Unfortunately there were a few amendments needed and it began to look as if we might not get that vital registration number in time, but that’s when the Commission came to our rescue. They allowed us to give an undertaking to make the necessary amendments so that we could have our all important Registration Number by the launch date. Not just F.E.W but phew!”