The Freshwater Foundation has been founded by Mark Robbins, an Ealing resident for the past 30 years. During that time, he has gained wide experience of charities and voluntary work, as a volunteer, as a manager within the sector and as a student examining it from without.
Finding himself in a position to give away a substantial sum of money, he wanted not only to donate to the areas closest to his heart but also to explore in a practical way some of the avenues available to the voluntary and charitable sectors suggested to him by both experience and study.
He also brings considerable experience as a teacher, having been a university lecturer for the past 16 years, and with it a passion to communicate the knowledge he has gained about charities and the voluntary sector, and the bold possibilities that are opening up for it.
In setting up the charity, he has gathered together a board of like-minded people, also Ealing residents of long-standing and each having made their own distinctive contribution to voluntary organisations in the borough and beyond.