About Us
Friends of African Nursing
We are a small UK based charity run by healthcare volunteers dedicated to sharing our knowledge and skills with colleagues in Africa. Charity status was achieved in 2006. Since that time we have continued to manage our commitment and develop our capacity to deliver education to perioperative nurses in a variety of different English speaking countries in Africa.
Trustees - Board of Friends of African Nursing
Kate Woodhead- Independent Healthcare Consultant and Chairman of Trustees. Kate, co-founded FoAN with Lesley Fudge, and enjoys the challenge of helping nurses working in constrained healthcare systems, in Africa. She finds the development of perioperative organisations in Africa and their continued support as they develop, particularly rewarding. Her work as a healthcare consultant fits around her other voluntary work.
Debbie Lee- Independent Healthcare Consultant Debbie runs her own business specialising in leadership and organisational development. She was a Nursing Officer, Department of Health, England, responsible for acute services and has worked at every level of healthcare in UK. She was the first nurse President of the National Association of Theatre Nurses.
Jackie Younger- Director, Leading Workforce Solutions. Jackie has a background in operating department nursing and management and, has also been a Lecturer within a College of Health Studies. Jackie was Lead Workforce Designer for Practitioners and Prescribing in the NHS Changing Workforce Programme (CWP), and then became the National Practitioner Programme Lead. She now manages her own business specialising in workforce and service development and change management.
Lesley Wood- Nurse Consultant in Perioperative Care Lesley works at Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge. She was the first and subsequently Lead Surgical Care Practitioner contributing much to the development of new ways of working. Lesley first travelled with FoAN to Ghana, as a Molnlycke Award winner in 2008.
Dot Chadwick- Perioperative Educator Dot has worked in the perioperative environment for many years, undertaking clinical, managerial and educational roles.
She is currently working as a Practice Educator at Southampton University NHS Trust with the opportunity to maintain personal clinical skills on a regular basis. Dot is an active member of AfPP and a Past Officer of the Association. Dot says, "It is an honour and a privilege to serve as a Trustee of FOAN".
Patrons
Linda Wain- Wildlife artist. Linda is an internationally known and talented artist. She has original work in public and private collections throughout the world. Linda is well respected by her peers for her realistic portrayal of all types of wildlife. She brings energy and enthusiasm to support the human element in countries where she has painted, to the ambassadorial role for FoAN.
Sir Stephen Moss- Chairman of Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Stephen was Director of Nursing and then Chief Executive at Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham. He was appointed a Non- Executive Director at Mid Staffordshire in August 2009, and has subsequently become Chairman. He brings extensive clinical and managerial experience and a wealth of contacts to the ambassadorial role for FoAN.
Annual Report
The Annual Reports record our activities and will continue to do so. We will continue to grow our activities and ensure that in a voluntary capacity, we devote time, commitment and enthusiasm to assisting colleagues in Africa.
Newsletter
The enthusiasm of our supporters and Members is wonderful. The Newsletter is now available on line, and we hope will continue to be produced at least twice during the year, records some of the events and activities of FoAN.
Membership Scheme
The Membership scheme is a means for supporters to stay in touch with all our activities. See the Membership area of the website.
Sales
See our brochure for all the different cards, brooches and T-shirts which support our work, enabling us to do more for our African colleagues.
How it all began - a brief history
Friends of African Nursing was started as an organisation by two individuals, who had family contacts in Africa and due to their professional nursing backgrounds, had taken an interest in the health systems in African countries which they had visited whilst on holiday.
It was apparent to them both separately, that the privilege of the healthcare environment in which they both worked in the UK - which offered continuing education, ready access to journals, speciality (perioperative) education and a professional association (in which they were closely involved, at home) as a ready made network... was indeed a huge privilege which should be shared. So Lesley Fudge and Kate Woodhead raised some funds, used whatever contacts they could make, find or encourage and the first course in Uganda became a reality! Thanks to all those early supporters, we were on the road to many more travels and sharing experiences and knowledge with our African Nursing colleagues albeit on a very small scale.
Growth and development
The organisation continued to grow and thanks to continuing financial support and encouragement particularly from Denis Robson from Johnson and Johnson Professional Export, from these small beginnings gained charity status in 2006. From then until the present day we have continued to build on the early beginnings, growing and thriving.
The Board of Trustees Friends of African Nursing November 2010