About us

We are a group of individuals from Hay-on-Wye who were inspired by the twinning initiative between Hay and Timbuktu in 2007.

Tuareg Relief and it's trading arm, Jump4Timbuktu, were conceived during a visit to Timbuktu in February 2008 when we responded to an invitation of the Mayor to meet leaders of the 57 Artisan Associations of the city.

The compelling need for the artisans to establish worldwide markets was immediately recognised and after a series of meetings we signed agreements to work together to develop new trade outlets and projects to sustain Tuareg culture and lifestyle. We registerd the charity Tuareg Relief, and it's trading company Jump4Timbuktu, in order to achieve these goals. The five trustees/directors of Tuareg Relief and Jump4Timbuktu are:

Steve Felgate: resident of Hay for 20 years. Steve is a former strategy consultant with 16 years' experience developing and implementing corporate strategy. As an entrepreneur, he has successfully developed a sustainable tourist business in Tobago as a model for supporting a community to develop a successful local economy. He is currently focussed on developing the strategic direction of Tuareg Relief in partnership with artisan and tribal leaders.

Michael Eccles: ex Arthur Andersen consultant who moved to Hay in 1999. He co-founded the Department of Enjoyment.org (Hay-on-Wye) CIC, which runs Hay-on-Fire in partnership with the Hay Literary Festival. Michael has an eclectic entrepreneurial background in design, film, property development, publishing and more. His focus in J4T is on developing the trading capability of Jump4Timbuktu and our fair trade processes both in the UK and Timbuktu.

Marie Rogers: resident of Hay for 10 years and has successfully developed, and sold, a jewellery and gift gallery. In Timbuktu, Marie was instrumental in identifying our product range and agreeing the fair trade price structure. She is now focussed on developing UK outlets for these goods, and systems for quality control and supply chain management.

Sue Campbell Felgate: has lived in Hay for 15 years. She has a background in group facilitation and communications and is highly competent in French. Sue has been responsible for facilitating the excellent relationships and understandings between those involved in the twinning of Hay-on-Wye and Timbuktu. Sue currently plays the lead role in maintaining good communications and agreements with the artisan community in Timbuktu and with the Mayor and his team.

Chris Armstrong: is a wood-turner and furniture maker. He has been a member of the Hay Makers Gallery, a local cooperative of designer makers, for 10 years. The gallery has been successfully selling high quality work from the Timbuktu area on a fair trade basis since August 2007 and supports the wider project. Chris became a director of Tuareg Relief and Jump4Timbuktu in March 2009, and has been active in expanding the fair trade organisation. He liaises closely with Marie Rogers in finding and developing further retail outlets for Tuareg jewellery and leather goods.

Team members

Pete Mannox: graduated from University of Reading in 2007 and in September 2008 started working full time with Jump4Timbuktu on a 12 month internship with responsibilities including building internet sales volume, online marketing and website optimisation and management.

Sue Lim: Owns the Blue Ginger gallery in Worcestershire, and has been successfully selling our Tuareg jewellery. Accompanied the team to Timbuktu in February 2009 and helped identify new jewellery products from the Tuareg artisans. Now actively supports our work and is particulary focused on improving media and PR coverage and on fudraising for projects in Timbuktu.

Tim Short: is an independent film maker and musician. He works from the Cardiff based production company Taglia Telly www.tagliatelly.co.uk where he makes films for the BBC, ITV and for charities such as VSO and Amnesty International. He is passionate about Africa and joined the Jump4timbuktu team in 2007. Tim is in charge of all our film production and support. He can also be contacted at www.timtysonshort.co.uk

The Legal Structure

Tuareg Relief is registered as a UK charity Nº 1127167 and in 2008 registered Jump4Timbuktu Limited as it's trading arm, company Nº 06585731. The five directors of Tuareg Relief are the sole owners of Jump4Timbuktu. Tuareg Relief and Jump4Timbuktu is run by unpaid directors and all profits from Jump4Timbuktu are gifted to Tuareg Relief for investment in sustainable projects for the benifit of the Tuareg community in and around Timbuktu.

Copyright

All film, photographs and text on this site are copyright protected. If you wish to seek permission to use anything, please contact us via the contacts page. We have a vast library of film footage and photographs of Mali and Timbuktu which we are seeking to exploit to raise funds for our community projects – if you can help us to do this by using some of it, we are happy to help.