Portfolios Archive - The Alborada Trust

Jul

Newmarket

Inevitably, because the ALBORADA Founding Trustee, Kirsten Rausing, lives there, Newmarket features among a number of beneficiaries from the Trust. It is active in the town in many ways, having provided help to the British Racing School, the Injured Jockeys Fund, Racing Welfare, the Racing Centre, the Newmarket Day Centre, the Wavertree Trust at the National Stud, the Newmarket Academy and latterly the Newmarket Charitable Foundation.

One off contributions have been made for other organisations such as the Bill Tutte scholarship.

The trust was a significant and major financial contributor to the National Horse Racing Museum.

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Feb

The Brooke

Brooke is an international charity that protects and improves the lives of working horses, donkeys and mules in some of the poorest communities in the world. There are more than 100 million working horses, donkeys and mules worldwide, transporting everything from people, to produce and building materials, food, water and fuel. These animals are the key means by which agriculture and food distribution systems function in some nations, and are vital livelihood assets in the fight against poverty. Established in 1934, Brooke has a strong track record of delivering impact, even in some of the world’s most challenging areas. They do this by working with people, communities and organisations to relieve immediate suffering and create long-lasting, sustainable change.

The Alborada Trust has supported The Brooke since 2006. Recent grants have been for their work in transforming the care of equines in the brick kiln industry in Pakistan – of which there are some 20,000. The funding provided by Alborada is helping The Brooke to scale up its work in these notoriously challenging environments where the welfare of animals and humans is severely compromised. The Brooke’s One Health approach to creating change will employ a holistic strategy that considers animals, people and the environment. Grants made over these many years by the Alborada trust have amounted to c. £3m.

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Feb

Mercy Ships

Mercy Ships provides free, life-changing surgery to people where medical care is nearly non-existent. Two out of three people worldwide do not have access to safe, affordable or timely surgery – Mercy Ships exists to change this.

By using hospital ships, Mercy Ships brings state-of-the-art equipment and a fully equipped training centre directly to countries on the continent of Africa, to provide training and mentoring to local health professionals.

They also partner with governments to strengthen their healthcare infrastructure and achieve their development aims, to leave a lasting legacy in each country they visit.

ALBORADA Trust’s £105,000 grant awarded in 2021 will fund the vital training of African surgeons in West and East Africa. The Trust’s previous grant of £35,000 in 2019 enabled Mercy Ships to train 12 Senegalese surgeons, whose new skills have transformed the lives of many patients.

Their surgical specialities include general surgery, maxillofacial, paediatric, women’s health, ophthalmic and dental.

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Action Against Hunger

The Brooke

Médecins Sans Frontières

Feb

Médecins Sans Frontières

The ALBORADA trustees take an active and personal interest in the plight of refugees – a worldwide problem that is steadily getting worse. There are close to a million in one camp alone (in the Cox’s Bazar area of Bangladesh, where the Rohingya fled following the violence in Myanmar in August 2017). Elsewhere, communities are fleeing gang violence in central America, people are arbitrarily detained in appalling conditions in Libya and, in the vast desert of northern Mali, insecurity, isolation and limited health infrastructure means that many thousands of children cannot access healthcare. And this is not to mention Haiti, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Sudan, Gaza, Uzbekistan, Belarus, South Africa, Yemen and the Congo to name just a few. This extraordinary charity, which does not accept any government money, carries out the most amazing work in difficult – and often dangerous – circumstances, (which have on occasions led to fatalities). The Alborada Trust has committed £4.5m to this charity for the quite remarkable work it carries out all over the world.

One of the world’s best run and most remarkable charities, MSF continues its amazing work in over 70 countries worldwide.

In support of this, The ALBORADA Trust has increased its grants over the years, to the point whereby it now supports projects in Bangladesh, Ethopia, Pakistan, South Sudan and Yemen.

“MSF is most grateful to The ALBORADA Trust for its continued support. In addition to work they have supported in Haiti and Nigeria, the trust has agreed the continuation of substantial multi-year grants towards MSF’s work in refugee camps in Lebanon, South Sudan and Bangladesh, through to 2023, at a cost of over half a million euros per annum. The work they support really makes the difference between people accessing medical care or not.”

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Mercy Ships

Veterinary Research

Feb

The Refugee Crisis and Disaster Relief

With 60 million refugees worldwide and the hardship arising from natural phenomena such as tsunamis, cyclones and flooding, the ALBORADA trustees take a particular interest in supporting the leading charities who carry out such amazing work in places such as Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh – where there are over one million Rohingya – and in Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Mexico, Afghanistan, Haiti, Mali, Yemen, South Sudan, the Congo, Venezuela and Honduras, to name just a few and not to mention the many refugee camps such as those in Syria, the Lebanon and Sudan. Primarily, the trustees concern is channelled through leading charities such as Medecins Sans Frontieres, ActionAid, Action against Hunger and IRC (all members of the Governments Disaster Emergency Committee).

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Feb

Veterinary Research

Trustees of the Alborada Trust are active in support of veterinary research. At the present time grants totalling nearly £1m have been awarded to the Royal Veterinary College and the School of Veterinary Medicine at Surrey University. In addition the Trust is supporting research at Cambridge University to try and establish a much improved vaccine against the equine herpes virus EHV-1 under James Wood OBE, The ALBORADA Professor of Equine and Farm Animal Science.

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Action Against Hunger

The Brooke

Médecins Sans Frontières

Feb

Professor of Equine and Farm Animal Science

James Wood, a veterinary epidemiologist with particular interests in infectious diseases and Head of Department of Veterinary Medicine, was appointed ALBORADA Professor of Equine and Farm Animal Science at the University of Cambridge in October 2008, following The ALBORADA Trust’s generous endowment of the professorship.

He had been working as Director of the Cambridge Infectious Diseases Consortium in the Department of Veterinary Medicine for the previous four years, in a scheme devised to bring more veterinarians into infectious disease research – linking research programmes between Cambridge and other local research institutions, including the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, the Animal Health Trust, the Animal Health Veterinary Laboratories Agency (AHVLA) and the Institute of Zoology.

As well as taking on responsibility for the equine and farm animal teaching and clinical activities at the University Veterinary School (of which he is Head), the endowment has allowed James to vigorously pursue his research programmes and has underpinned grant income or joint awards since 2008 of £8.1 million. This research programme focuses on emergence of infectious diseases, with particular regard to the fact that most new diseases of humans evolve from animals, including wildlife.

The research programme falls into three main areas, comprising the ecology and emergence of mammalian influenza viruses, the maintenance and emergence of RNA viruses from African fruit bats and the epidemiology and control of important animal diseases, including bovine tuberculosis, African Horse Sickness and Blue Tongue.

The present commitment of the ALBORADA Trust runs to 2027 at a cost of over £3m, some £2m having been paid to date.

Grants have also been made to the University for research work into multiple sclerosis being conducted by Professor Robin Franklin and Dr Myfanwy Hill (£282,000) and for Cancer Research being conducted by Professor Tony Green at the University’s Stem Cell Institute (£1,920,000).

James and Cambridge University have now taken over responsibility for the important research being conducted by Neil Bryant (previously with the Animal Health Trust) to find an improved vaccine for EHV-1 (Equine Herpes Virus).

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Mercy Ships

Veterinary Research

Feb

Cambridge-Africa Programme

University of Cambridge’s wide-ranging and long-term strategy of engagement with African higher education institutions moved into its next phase following the recent announcement of a $1.2 million grant by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and a £1 million grant by The ALBORADA Trust.

The 36-month award approved by the Carnegie Corporation’s Board of Trustees, alongside the four-year grant made by The ALBORADA Trust, will significantly enhance the funding already provided by the Isaac Newton Trust, the A.G. Leventis Foundation, and the University of Cambridge for the establishment of the Cambridge-Africa Partnerships for Research Excellence (CAPREx).

CAPREx aims to strengthen Africa’s capacity for sustainable excellence in research through close collaborative work with the region’s most talented individuals.

Building on successful partnerships with the University of Ghana and also Uganda’s Makerere University, CAPREx’s goal is to widen the scope of engagement to include the whole of the University of Cambridge and involve a greater number of higher education institutions in Africa.

The University of Cambridge has a long and rich tradition of research in Africa, although most of it had previously depended on discreet collaborations between individuals or specific academic departments.

A more joined-up strategy has recently emerged for holistic engagement with African universities, based on existing initiatives such as THRiVE (Training Health Researchers into Vocational Excellence in East Africa) and MUII (Infection and Immunity Research Training Programme), both sponsored by The Wellcome Trust.

These capacity-building programmes focus on PhD and postdoctoral researchers in health-related disciplines. Young African researchers are matched with leading Cambridge academics who provide mentorship and support.

The ’Cambridge in Africa’ programme is led by Professor David Dunne (Department of Pathology), with input from Professors James Wood and Duncan Maskell (Department of Veterinary Medicine and now Deputy Vice-Chancellor) and Professor Megan Vaughan (Centre of African Studies), and support from Dr Pauline Essah.

It works in partnership with African universities and research institutes in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda, among others.

Professor Dunne, who has collaborated with colleagues from African institutions for over three decades, said: “I am delighted that we have received generous funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and from The ALBORADA Trust to support our Cambridge in Africa Programme.

The current commitment of the ALBORAD Trust runs to 2025 at a cost of over £4m.

Picture Caption: Dr Robert Tweyongyere, MUII fellow, working in Professor David Dunne’s laboratory, Cambridge

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Mercy Ships

Veterinary Research

Feb

Action Aid

ActionAid works with the poorest women and girls around the world, changing their lives for good. Founded in 1972, it works in 40 plus countries across Asia, Africa and the Americas, supporting people to break free from poverty, end inequality and live a life of dignity. It fights for resilient livelihoods, quality education and an end to all forms of violence against women and girls. It also provides life-saving humanitarian relief in emergencies.

The ALBORADA Trust has supported ActionAid since 2015, and has agreed grants of over £500,000 from 2017-2020 to assist their work in Nepal, Haiti and Sierra Leone, following the devastation caused by the Nepal earthquake, Hurricane Matthew and Ebola. In 2018 the Trust agreed a grant of £300,000 payable over three years for ActionAid’s work with Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. In 2019 the Trust approved a grant of £360,000 payable over three years for work in Mozambique and Zimbabwe to support communities to rebuild in aftermath of Cyclone Idai. In 2021, the Trust has granted £150,000 to help people affected by the Tigray conflict in Ethiopia.

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Action Against Hunger

The Brooke

Médecins Sans Frontières