AirDropBox is a new concept to safely enable air delivery of humanitarian aid and logistics support to areas without transport infrastructure at low cost using commonly available air transport.
This is a biodegradable parachute and cardboard delivery enclosure with a crushable impact zone offering 100% sustainability whilst ensuring load integrity.
AirDropBox is a concept in development and trials have confirmed that it is viable. Comprehensive patent rights have been sought and will apply worldwide with a focus on Europe, USA, Russia, China, Japan, India, the Middle East, South America, South Korea, Australia and Canada.
It is a waterproofed corrugate cardboard box with built in reinforced paper parachute and integral landing crumple zone.
I was 100 yards from the IRA bomb which blew up the Horse & Groom in Guildford; the bomb exploded at 20:29 on Saturday 5th October 1974, I was 18 years old. I responded without a thought, I headed in the direction of the blast and tended to the wounded. I was the first and only responder on site for what seemed like an age, although it was only a few minutes. There were 5 dead and 65 injured. This experience had a formative impact on me.
Due to my work helping charities prepare for disaster, when the Civil Contingencies Bill was going through Parliament I noticed that Clause 4 included a new duty on local authorities to provide ‘advice and assistance’ to businesses but not explicitly charities. After clarifying that the voluntary sector were not included with the Attorney General’s office I discussed this with my local Member of Parliament and friend, Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP. We agreed to campaign together; she got the Shadow Leaders of both Houses to table amendments while I lobbied Ministers, MPs, Emergency Planning Officers and the media; the government resisted.
On 15th September 2004 at the Third Reading in the upper house Lord after Lord stood up and supported our amendment, the government spokesman saw that the vote would go our way and backed down. Roger Hargreaves and Daniel Greaves, who were leading the CC Bill team at the Cabinet Office, met me in the lobby and demanded “What do you want?” I then assisted re-writing the Act, Regulations and Guidance.
At 00:20 on Saturday 8th January 2005 Carlisle flooded, the council ceased to function for three days; local authorities started phoning the Charity Disaster Recovery Network (CDRN), which I ran, asking if we could help them as they were ‘non-profit’ organisations. After seeking Whitehall’s view we re-invented ourselves as Community Resilience UK, a nonprofit Community Interest Company working with government and the voluntary sector to help protect the public in emergencies.
The charity is constituted as a Charitable Trust by Deed dated 2nd July 1995 and was registered by the Charity Commission on 14th August 1995 as number 1048640. The principal object of the charity is “The support of such charity or charities or for such charitable purpose or purposes as the Trustees in their absolute discretion think fit”.
Charitable Objectives:
It’s areas of benefit are:
The Cook Foundation UK has fully committed 100% of its current funding to existing charity projects and in addition has a long waiting list of further charitable initiatives it wishes to support in the future. For this reason no approaches from potential beneficiaries are invited and no applications for grants are accepted.
During the Bosnia crisis of April 1992 to December 1995 many small charities were sending emergency supplies in small vehicles at a high cost per Kg delivered. I had the simple idea of hiring a blank 40' artic truck and having a badge from each of 20 charities in the glove box. Photos of 'Our man in Bosnia' were sent back to all 20 charities for their supporters’ feedback and encouragement, and transport costs reduced to 1/4.
After doing this informally for a while I eventually founded a charity called ‘Relief Aid Logistics’ on 5th December 1994, which continued my work of providing transport for small NGOs. Each set of donors and supporters could have photos of their man in Bosnia delivering their aid while wearing their badge and saving 50% of the cost of getting it there.
After the Bosnia conflict I focused on the developing world and enjoyed some wonderful partnerships with charities like Faith in Action, a husband and wife team in Crawley, Sussex. Working with church groups all over the UK, Martin and Sally Jeffree send beautifully cleaned, ironed and wrapped clothes and lovingly refurbished school equipment and consumables to Africa.
In the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 we are now seeking to provide supplies to the elderly and vulnerable and appeal for emergency storage and funding ... Landlords, do you have an empty warehouse or industrial unit we can use?
South East 4x4 Response (SE4x4R) provides 4x4 vehicle support in times of need to the emergency services, local authorities and charitable groups.
Although not an Emergency or Rescue Service, our speciality is logistics in extreme conditions and we aim to provide a reliable 24hour/365-day support service when other arrangements are at full capacity or cannot proceed due to inclement weather conditions or extreme terrain.
South East 4x4 Response are a team made up of highly trained unpaid specialists who give up their time, apply their skills and offer the use of their vehicles and their experience to serve the local community.
With increased risk of flooding and extremes of weather and in circumstances where remote locations or uneven terrain are involved the emergency, voluntary services often find themselves without the correct resources. 4x4 Response Groups, by one name or another, formally and informally, across the UK have voluntarily provided valuable support in these circumstances,in all weathers, at all times of the day and night, 365 days a year.
4x4 Response operates at two distinct levels. Nationally it is called 4x4 Response UK and it acts as an umbrella organisation supporting the teams in their local 4x4 Response Groups.
The National organisation is a point of contact for any national issues / questions / proposals, i.e. anything which affects all teams. It is constituted as a charity with a group of trustees elected by its members (the member teams and any individuals who have individual membership at a national level).
Regionally each team is run day-to-day autonomously and will be named regionally (e.g. Wessex 4x4 Response etc.). This is where the work happens, team members are trained within their 4x4 Groups, and it is the team which builds relationships within its area with user bodies such as the police and ambulance services. The team is called out by the user body.
4x4 Response UK does not operate its services nationally, where there is a need for a national callout, such a call out then goes from the national level to each relevant team, the 4x4 Response Group teams deploy and work together
As Project Manager for the Microsoft project ‘Digital Pipeline’ I wanted the initiative to be clearly charitable, and so I incorporated the secretariat into a charitable company limited by guarantee called “Computers 4 Africa” on 19th August 2004.
When phoning around fundraising I happened to speak to B&Q and they said I must talk to “AK”; this turned out to be Aseri Katanga, one of their 40,000 employees, who had been chosen as their ‘Hero of the Year 2006’ and was given a year off on full salary to work for charity. Aseri’s dream was to send computers to schools in his village and region in Bukoba, North West Tanzania. With B&Q’s support this then took off in its own right and has now sent 50,000 PCs for school children to use in 18 African countries.
Subsequently I wanted to explore the possibility of taking the ‘Computers 4 Africa’ concept to other countries in Europe where there are few existing charity PC refurbishers. For this I established ‘Computers 4 Africa Europe’ on 19th June 2007 which is a registered charity (a ‘vzw’) in Brussels. From there it can work with the European Commission and have access to delegations from all European countries. Our third branch we hope to open soon in Switzerland.
In 2004 Microsoft were training teachers in Namibia and wanted to provide low cost computers. Due to my previous relationship with them and experience of refurbishing computers, I was asked to project manage this initiative which was called ‘Digital Pipeline’.
The vision then expanded to providing low cost high quality refurbished computers to any who did not have access to IT, especially the developing world. In 2011 Digital Pipeline merged with another charity I formed called ‘Computers 4 Africa’. I was privileged to have Bill Gates record a personal video supporting this project.
In 1998 the idea came to me of asking Chelsfield plc, the owners of 89 Albert Embankment an empty 1/4m sq ft office block next to MI6, if they would allow it to be used by charities. The answer was “Yes” and after a multi-million pound refurbishment we filled it with 40 charities, with over 1,000 staff, in 1999 including: Association of Retirement Housing, CANS Trust, Cicely Northcote Trust, Comic Relief, Elderly Accommodation Counsel, IFAW, Lady Hoare Trust, Landmine Action, Marie Curie Cancer Care, REACH, RETHINK, The Centre For Economic & Social Inclusion, The Charity Finance Directors Group, The Dystonia Society, Trinity College London Examination Board, Wildlife & Countryside Link and the World Society For The Protection of Animals. It is now known as ‘Charity Towers’.
This initiative pre-dated and inspired CAN, the Ethical Property Company, Third Sector Centres and others to follow suit. In order to take forward the concept in a form that I could hand it over to someone else to run I incorporated ‘Voluntary Sector Centres’ on 19th April 2004.
On 1st March 2005 the Director of Active Communities at the Home Office, Jitinder Kohli, officially opened the next charity centre at Charles House, 375 Kensington High Street with 20 Charities in 30,000 sq. ft. Charities in residence included Age Concern (Kensington and Chelsea), AMREF UK, British Suzuki Institute, Disability Equality, Faith Based Regeneration Network, Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, Image in Action, Interact Reading Service, TOPSS England, World Confederation of Physical Therapy. I retired as a Director on 15th September 2005.
On Saturday 15th June 1996 at 11:20 an IRA bomb hit Central Manchester. People were attempting to contact the Citizens Advice Bureaux because of the explosion, but the Bureaux couldn’t help as their offices were caught in the blast and wrecked. Shortly after I received a phone call; someone at the Citizens Advice Bureaux had heard of my work with the Charity Insurance Association and its successor the Charity Disaster Recovery Network, and thought I must know something about recovering from disasters.
Within a few days I found the Citizens Advice Bureau alternative offices and helped them become fully operational again; inspired by this hundreds of charities now applied to join the Charity Disaster Recovery Network (CDRN) which I formed out of the Charity Insurance Association on 12th March 1996 to provide continuity planning for NGOs in the UK. Initially formed with 10 member charities, this network grew to 3,800 member organisations by the end of 2005 when I left. In recognition of this work I was later elected a Fellow of the Institute of Association Management.
Charities whose premises suffer a disaster need replacement offices, furniture, computers and software. The CDRN sought Option Agreements from owners of empty buildings for charities to use them in an emergency. Alongside this I created Charity Logistics to meet practical needs generally, Green-Works to appeal for donations of furniture and CyberCycle to seek donations of computers, both organisations would then refurbish these donations for charity use.
If charities wanted new PCs, I negotiated a charity discount arrangement with Dell who said:
Providing quality technology from Dell is the next logical step for a charity that already has office space, furniture, software, insurance, disaster recovery …
Working with the then Pubisher of Charity Times, Richard Bowser, we launched this concept with a long lead-time only to discover that Charity Finance magazine then launched the same idea a few months later, but held their awards before ours. What we thought was going to be original and unique turned out to be in competition with an alternative awards event.
However being held in the Great Room at the Grosvenor House Hotel and eventually attracting a royal presence (I hosted the Duchess of Wessex) it was a success. Many excellent charities have been recognised and their achievements celebrated!
A mutual friend introduced me to Robin Hutchinson, who wore ‘dog collar’ shirts with no tie. To me this was an interesting fashion sense and led to him being nicknamed ‘The Vicar’. Over coffee we got chatting about encouraging charity work through recognition and focusing on our leaders to show the way by good example.
The conversation came around to Members of Parliament and the thought arrived of putting on an event to celebrate individual MP’s charity work. So Robin said that he would organise it if I sponsored the first one; I said “yes, let’s do it” and the rest is history!
Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, was the winner of the Children’s Champion at the inaugural awards in 2003 and David Cameron MP the winner of the Disability Award 2004.
At the time dial-up internet access was expensive. On 29th March 1999, representing the Parliamentary Information Technology Committee (PITCOM), Margaret Moran MP launched ‘Charityvfree’ in the Atrium at 4 Millbank, Westminster.
This was both a free internet service for UK charities to use themselves, and for them to become virtual internet service providers to their supporters. This was delivered through our four year agreement with Internet Service Provider, Vossnet plc.
Charities received a share of the local call rates, users are given 15Mb of web space and unlimited email addresses. We understood this to be the first service of its kind in the World.
Web archive of the original Charityvfree portal (2000)
UK Fundraising article
I was sitting outside a café on Broadgate in the City with Richard Bowser; as the Publisher he was trying to sell me advertising space in Charity Times magazine. I tried to change the subject and starting asking what does the charity sector actually need, what might be of practical use?
We started talking about charities’ special needs and who supplies charity specific products and services. So I challenged Richard to produce a ‘telephone directory’ guide with an on-line searchable database, saying that if he did I would help identify suppliers and would also sponsor it. He said he would take the idea back to Perspective Publishing and see if they were up for it. They were, it worked and is now called the Charity Times Market Guide!
In October 1996 I was wondering what to do with 300 computers which had been donated by Bob Gibson of BP when they moved out of Britannic Tower; we had been given the job of clearing out the 34 storeys near Moorgate in the City of London.
I wanted the PCs to go to charities, but they needed refurbishing. I heard that Bootstrap Enterprises in Hackney were closing down a computer refurbishing project informally called “CyberCycle”, as its grant money had run out. I cheekily asked if I could take on the initiative with one full-time and two part-time employees, along with volunteers, they said “Yes”.
I moved CyberCycle to 89 Albert Embankment in October 1996, expanding the volunteering opportunities and eventually incorporated it on 7th May 1997. We had many IT graduates volunteer with us to gain work experience on their CVs and then succeed in getting jobs.
Apparently this was noticed by Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson as they were drawing up the Labour Party Manifesto in 1996/7 and in June 1997 we were approached by the Department of Employment to be the Pathfinder for ‘New Deal’. I later shared the stage with Tony Blair at the first national New Deal Conference in 1999 and after Gordon Brown visited us, worked with him on ‘Computers Within Reach’ for the unemployed in 2000.
As CyberCycle’s PCs needed software I negotiated with Microsoft a ‘Select Agreement’ to grant UK charities an 80% discount on software. This began a long-term relationship with Microsoft at several levels, eventually leading to managing their ‘Digital Pipeline’ project and the creation of ‘Computers 4 Africa’.
Wanting office furniture for charities I phoned everyone who I thought might help and ended up talking to Bob Gibson of BP in August 1996. Bob took me up to the 12th floor of Britannic Tower near Moorgate in the City of London and asked if we could clear out the whole 34 story building by 31st December 1996, which we did!
We distributed an estimated 250 tonnes of office furniture to charities, including completely fitting out a 50,000 sq ft charity centre called Crown House in Sunderland with furniture and 19,000 carpet tiles and also the Big Issue’s new offices, with stock left over which we put into storage along with 300 computers for further distribution to charities.
Colin Crooks, then a manager at a related project CyberCycle, was inspired by this experience to set up Green-Works on 13th June 2000, with my support as a non-executive director. Once the business became established I stepped down on 31st August 2001.
Colin expanded the business rapidly opening five large warehouses across the country, giving training and employment to the unemployed. In the process Green-Works created nearly 1,000 jobs and diverted 47,000 tonnes of old furniture from landfill and put it to a socially responsible good use.
Green-Works Wikipedia page
Web archive of the Green-Works website (2017)
In early 1996 I was driving around a corner and wondered why vehicle technology had not advanced to the stage where we could be more comfortable and the car bank into the corner, like an aeroplane or a motorbike; at least be aerodynamically efficient by remaining flat and stable. I looked at existing models from all manufacturers and also carried out a Patent search, but found little.
So I thought I would invent something that did what I wanted.
My father was a mechanical engineer apprenticed at the Dennis factory in Guildford making fire engines, like his father and older brother before him. He volunteered to serve in the Royal Electrical & Mechanical Engineers (REME) in 1943 and was attached to the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards who were in Sherman tanks.
He ‘went across’ 40 days after D-Day (D+40) through France, Belgium, Holland and Germany. Jack helped develop the sprung tracks on the Centurion Mk II at Bovington and then was recruited by Caterpillar, taking two year assignments across the Middle East and Africa. He taught me from young to be an engineer; I rebuilt my first bicycle down to the ball-bearings and back up when I was seven (a red Dawes), my first motorbike when I was 16 (a Honda 50) and car when I was 19 (a Morris Minor).
What I came up with is a split torsion bar with vacuum servo or hydraulic power assistance to add ‘twist’ to keep the car upright, triggered by a G-force accelerometer and balance sensor. This is British Patent Application Number 9805742.5 dated 19th March 1998 and Registered Trade Mark 908301 filed 17th August 1998 and Registered 17th August 2000.
Go look under most top-end luxury cars to see it in action.
At 13:30 on Friday 3rd November 1995 at the QEII Centre in Westminster Rt Hon Alun Michael MP, the then Shadow Minister for the Voluntary Sector, launched the Charities Insurance Association on behalf of Relief Aid Logistics. This initiative provided charities with 20% discounted insurance premiums, through collective bulk purchasing, wider cover on specially negotiated terms for voluntary organisations, nominated loss adjusters and a free charity insurance helpline.
The idea occurred to me of enabling the public to donate a small life insurance premium each month to create and bequeath a large capital sum to charity on their death. I called this ‘Legacy Enhancement’; the Express, Daily Mail and other national media published editorials on it.
The Association was managed by Willis Corroon and the cover was underwritten by a panel including Commercial Union, General Accident, Royal Insurance and Sun Alliance. It soon became apparent from risk management appraisals that charities needed disaster recovery planning and practical continuity arrangements, and so this initiative developed into the Charity Disaster Recovery Network (CDRN).
Realising the need charities had for disaster recovery arrangements and that they could not afford them, I formed the Charity Disaster Recovery Network (CDRN) on 12th March 1996 to provide continuity planning for NGOs in the UK. Initially there was not much take up, until June 1996 when hundreds of charities started applying because of what happened to the Citizens Advice Bureau in Manchester on the 15th June 1996.
After Business Studies at Guildford College and a gap year working on a ranch in Colorado USA, my first proper job was as a Salesman for Rank Xerox starting on 11th December 1978 (didn’t last long). I subsequently worked for Rentokil and others, eventually being headhunted by Mitsui & Co Ltd and to my surprise becoming a commodity trader in the City of London.
Eventually I retired from employment on Friday 21st October 1988, a momentous day for me. I experimented with one or two business ideas for a few years (which didn't work) and thereafter devoted myself to charity work, starting with the Bosnia conflict in April 1992, being formalised when I created Relief Aid Logistics on 5th December 1994.
I was brought up in the Middle East and Africa, it was an exciting childhood. There were several revolutions we just managed to avoid (Iraq, Iran, Liberia & Libya), I collected amazing pets including two chimpanzees called Charlie and Henry, drowned in a crocodile hole and was resuscitated, walked into a herd of buffalo in dense bush and survived the stampede, was the only white boy in a school of a thousand and even came out unscathed after our house was raked with gunfire. It was fun.
A trouble maker at school, I was an academic failure just scraping through on little or no work. Instead I seemed to end up leading informal groups of other trouble makers, and of course getting the blame which at the time I unwisely perceived to be a badge of honour.
I was entrusted with firing 303s and SLRs at Bisley and Pirbright (best rapid fire marksman), Carl Gustafs and 25 Pounders on Salisbury Plain (blowing up armoured vehicles). I really enjoyed demolition charges, thunder flashes, flares and tracer during night exercises at Folkstone.