Riding the Storm by Duncan Bannatyne

Author:Duncan Bannatyne [Bannatyne, Duncan]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781448184750
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2013-09-25T14:00:00+00:00

NINETEEN

Putting Things in Perspective

No matter how tough things got dealing with bankers and bureaucrats at work, I actually considered myself extremely lucky to be going through all that turmoil – I thought I was lucky to be alive. In January 2010, I had been due to visit Haiti with two of the charities I support, Scottish International Relief and UNICEF. I’d been due to fly out on 19 January, but on 12 January the country suffered one of the most devastating earthquakes in recorded history and the hotel we had been booked into collapsed. If we had travelled a week earlier – well, I wouldn’t be writing this book.

As soon as news of the earthquake broke, UNICEF called to say they were cancelling the trip, as the priority was obviously now disaster relief rather than humanitarian support. I told them that as soon as it was sensible for the trip to be rescheduled, I was still keen to visit because Haiti would be needing even more help now.

I’ve been involved with SIR and UNICEF for two decades now. They are at extreme ends of the charitable sector – one is a tiny organisation run from a garden shed, and the other is world-famous and gets support from some very big names. Both charities do amazing work, and ensuring that I make enough profit to be able to continue to support their projects has been a real motivation for me throughout my career.

I eventually flew out to Haiti in January 2011 and my daughter Hollie came with me. In the same way that my kids have become interested in the family business as they’ve got older, they have also become increasingly curious about the charities that we support. They’ve grown up with me coming home from trips to Romanian orphanages, or schools in Malawi, and although my charity work has always been part of their lives, I think it was only as they got older that they really began to appreciate how much it means to me. Hollie said she wanted to learn more about what our Foundation does and how we help people. She and her sister Evie have already been to visit the orphanage I fund in Romania to learn how that works, and in April 2013 Hollie organised a charity ball at Charlton House hotel which raised £25,000 for the Bannatyne Charitable Trust. I think in the future she actually wants to work for the Foundation.

When Hollie asked if she could come with me to Haiti I was in two minds as to whether I should say yes. On the one hand, it would be a fantastic opportunity for her to learn about the work of the foundation, but on the other hand Haiti is not the safest of places and had recently acquired the label of rape capital of the world.

You might think that in a country devastated by an earthquake and then ravaged by a cholera outbreak, the survivors would somehow be motivated to look out for one another.

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