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24 May 2010
Interview with David McKee - Founder, Chairman & Trustee
"My job involves overseeing all the running of the Charity in the UK and in Guatemala. In particular it's my responsibility for budgets and executive responsibility for just about everything that goes on; as well as reporting back to the Trustees."In an average year I spend about 12 weeks in Guatemala. This year I'll be spending less time there as we put more effort into fundraising in the UK, so it'll probably just be a total of around 6 weeks."We have two committees that help make the decisions on how the money is spent; one in the UK and one in Guatemala. Our overall spending decisions, for both the amounts and the areas of spending, is down to the board of trustees in the UK. Once that has been decided a certain amount of responsibility is passed on to the Management team in Guatemala. We tell them the areas where we want to spend, and then the specifics on what they spend it on are up to the Guatemala team. We have to keep tightly to the budgets on a monthly basis and we have regular visits to check on the project- we have three this year."Our immediate goal is to maintain the services and funding that we have in place for this year- in this difficult market. Long term we would like to replicate what we have in the area of Jocotenango and San Felipe and geographically spread that into other very poor areas of Guatemala and the rest of Central America."One of our most important projects is the Safehouse. The Safehouse houses all the extreme cases of hardship that we have; there are two families of orphans, there are victims of repeated physical and sexual abuse, and there is a family who were deserted by their last remaining parent."As for the most extreme cases of poverty... we've visited houses that didn't have a proper roof, didn't have proper walls, have a mud floor, and have no electricity or water. We've taken steps to improve or rebuild those houses. We've come across families that have had no food to eat for days- and we now provide them with regular food. There's too many cases to go through but in each of the different areas we try to help."We've had many success stories. There was the father that was repeatedly abusing his two daughters and physically assaulting his sons. We got social services to rescue the family and we got a court order for the Foundation to be legally responsible for the five children. That was a great success. There was another case where a girl was gang raped by her landlord and four friends. We moved her away and built a new house for them in another village. We still look after this family to this day. These are difficult stories to talk about but this is the reality of what we face- and if it wasn't for the Foundation the children involved would still be living in these nightmare situations."The money that we spend in Guatemala comes from a variety of sources. The most stable is through our individual child sponsorship programme. People pay the cost of our education programme which is £300 - £375 per annum. That money goes directly from the donor to one child and pays for the cost of their education. About a third of our budget comes from that. The rest is made from fundraising events- golf days, dinners, music events, and a small amount comes from applications to charitable trusts and corporations."I truly believe that people in the UK and in the developed world should support something- whether it is EFTC or another Charity. I believe it is the duty of everyone that is born in a wealthy country to try and help somebody somewhere who is less fortunate only through an accident of birth. This year we really need more help. The plummeting exchange rate and the credit crunch are really affecting us and we don't want to have to cut our services or turn children away.