Projects Team

LATA Foundation Profile: Lucy Clark, Head of Projects 

Lucy fell in love with Latin America while studying Spanish at university, where she spent six months in Mexico and backpacked across Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia. This led to jobs in travel and tourism dealing with Latin America, recently with Exsus and now in her current role with Orient-Express, supporting sales to hotels in Peru, Brazil and Mexico along with the rest of the worldwide collection.

 

 

Lucy has been on our projects committee for three years: “After years of having great fun and making my career out of travel to Latin America,” she explains with characteristic cheerfulness, “I wanted to put something back to a destination that has given me so much pleasure over the course of the last 10 years. As a supporter of responsible tourism, I am keen to mitigate any of the potentially damaging effects tourism can have on environmentally fragile areas, and to make sure that local people benefit from tourism.” 

Projects committee

The projects committee includes Jill Forgham, Stuart Whittington, Sue Parrott, Claire Betts, Jude Berry and Isabelle Mazille. Liza Masias attends when she can. “Our team is tasked with sourcing, evaluating and monitoring the LATA Foundation projects. We meet once every six weeks to discuss new proposals and ongoing projects. Once a new project has been identified and thoroughly researched (often after lively debate!), it is submitted to the trustees for approval.”

“The team is staffed entirely by volunteers,” Lucy continues, “All of whom are involved with Latin America and the travel business – although we would welcome new members from outside the industry. The team is dedicated, passionate and enthusiastic and it was a pleasure to be asked to step in as chairman to head up such a fantastic group.”

Applications

The projects team welcomes new applications from NGOs and not-for-profit organisations. “It can be challenging to find new projects that suit our remit and level of funding, and this involves a lot of reading through detailed project proposals to make sure they are the right fit for us. Inevitably, we have to turn down some project applications, which can be tough when it’s clearly an excellent project, but just doesn’t match our aims. As volunteers with full time jobs and the amount of reading involved, finding the time to follow up on new leads and project proposals can be difficult, but we manage to pull together and divide up the work to make sure tasks are completed.”

“Meetings are stimulating and lots of fun, with useful and interesting discussions surrounding our projects. I think we all enjoy identifying a new project and then seeing it come to life. It’s great to look back at what we’ve achieved as such a small and still relatively new charity.”

Inspiring

“We’re also lucky to be able to visit some of our projects in Latin America, which is a real buzz. Team members returning from a visit to one of our projects give invaluable feedback and fascinating accounts of their trip to the rest of the group, which inspires us to continue our work. I was lucky enough to visit our project in Buenos Aires, Todos Juntos, and a small charity providing dental care to children living in the city’s slums.  Seeing the dedication of the local team and the conditions the children were living in was both inspiring and humbling.”

“Some of our work is truly life-changing, life-saving and life-affirming. We have had some wonderful success stories, such as the setting up of a cottage industry in Guatemala making cosmetics – one young woman in the project is now looking to export them to the US! I’m also proud of the crisis support work we did in Peru following the floods in the Cusco area in 2010. We were able to provide meals, educational activities and medical supplies to some 36 children living in one of the worst affected areas.”

Looking ahead                                                                                                              

“Our aim is to have a project or projects in every Latin American country and as our team continues to work hard to source new projects, we are moving towards that goal. We already work closely with the travel industry, but there is scope to do so much more to find additional funding, sponsorship and partnerships in this area. I would love to see the LATA Foundation as the definitive go-to resource for travellers, travel companies and the press looking for interesting, sustainable projects in Latin America to visit and support. I hope that in the future we will be able to afford a paid member of staff to help us grow the Foundation.”

Lucy has been involved with other charities in the past from uprooting rhododendrons in Ireland’s ancient oak forests, to funding the secondary schooling of a Kenyan school girl.

Lucy is positive, bright, knowledgable and clearly enthusiastic. LATA Foundation projects are in very good hands.

If you would like to get involved with the LATA Foundation either as a volunteer or to sponsor our projects, please contact us: info@latafoundation.org

 

Date added: 12 February 2012