History
The legacy
Carol Henderson set up The Trussell Trust in 1997 with money left to her by her mother, Catherine Edith (Betty) Trussell.
On receiving her mother's legacy Carol, with her husband Paddy, decided to start a charity that would reach people in need. The Trust, which is deeply committed to the beliefs and values of the Christian faith, initially funded all its activities from this legacy.
The Background
Between 1994 and 1995, Paddy and Carol Henderson worked for Tearfund on a feeding project in Armenia reaching 96,000 people, and supporting 80 kindergartens, 1 soup kitchen and an orphanage. They saw the life changing effects of small amounts of money, within large projects, meeting the immediate needs of disenfranchised people.
On returning to the UK Paddy and Carol were repeatedly involved with people who had suffered various trauma in their lives and desperately needed affordable, good and professional counselling to effect healing and positive life changes. They, therefore, set up The Lightship Christian Counselling Service in Salisbury as part of The Trussell Trust, funded by the legacy. The success of this and its strong foundation enabled them to launch The Lightship Christian Counselling Service as a charity in its own right thereby releasing them to work on other projects.
The beginning of The Trussell Trust
In 1997 Paddy Henderson worked in Bulgaria on another Tearfund and Mission East project where he found young people sleeping on freezing streets, sniffing glue, with no hope for their future. Paddy was moved to take action and The Trussell Trust's Bulgaria project was launched. This was reported in The Salisbury Journal and prompted a call from a mother who wanted to point out that whilst he was busy feeding people overseas her children in the UK were going to bed hungry. Paddy and a small focus group carried out a great deal of detailed research, including looking at the indices of deprivation for Wiltshire, which confirmed their subjective research and the shocking fact that thousands of people were living on the edge of poverty within the UK. Paddy and Carol felt compelled to act and set up the Salisbury foodbank in 1999, using funding from the legacy. This alerted local people to this previously largely unknown phenomenon within everyday South Wiltshire society.
Running parallel with this embryonic project, work in Bulgaria continued into another phase when the orphanage/school, from which the street children from the original project came, was identified. Lack of State funding forced such institutions to close during holiday periods and the children chose to expose themselves to dangers on the capital's streets rather than return to life in dysfunctional families in gypsy communities. This had to be addressed and work began with the orphanage/school director and staff, setting up respite camps for these holiday periods together with transforming the orphanage itself as the conditions there were dire, lacking sufficient water, toilets, food and clothing. As relationships with individuals built up, it became clear that much work was required with the gypsy communities and a number of projects were initiated to break the circle of poverty.
Since its inception in 1997 The Trussell Trust has experienced huge growth. New projects in Bulgaria and the UK have been developed and the foodbank is now a national franchise with projects launched right across the UK. With the continuing expansion of its work, The Trussell Trust is constantly having to grow new sources of income and now runs its own social enterprise project to help contribute towards funds and to provide training and employment for clients of the foodbank, thereby meeting its vision to restore waste places, be they individuals or communities, by launching life changing, sustainable projects.
The future
The future looks set for further growth and The Trussell Trust's vision is to see dignity restored and hope revived in many more lives.
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Prior to her death Catherine Edith (Betty) Trussell felt moved by the plight of a particular friend of her daughter, Carol's and asked "What can I do?" Therefore, when she died shortly afterwards, Carol felt it right to use part of that legacy to set up The Trussell Trust. This legacy has allowed many lives to be transformed and is a constant reminder of what difference comparatively small amounts of money, judiciously used, can make in the world. |