Every penny counts

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

Those words are as true today as they were when the great philosopher Lao Tzu wrote them millennia ago. Many small charities have taken them to heart and operate on that basis. They believe in helping people to help themselves. That's one reason why the Trust supports them. The other reason is that these small charities make a relatively small amount of money go a very long way.

How does your support help?

• In many poor countries children cannot go to school unless they have uniforms. It costs just £4 in Tanzania to provide two uniforms and a few exercise books and pens for a child - but when you are dirt poor that's a huge sum.

  Four pounds can change a life

• There are millions of people who are blind from cataracts and, therefore, utterly destitute. A charity hospital in Dar es Salaam will perform a cataract operation for £10 - not that they turn anyone away.

  Ten pounds to see again.

• Tens of millions of people contract the worst form of malaria because they have no protection against mosquitoes. It costs less than £1 to supply someone with a mosquito net impregnated with insecticide.

  One pound to protect someone from a deadly disease.

• It costs as little as £25 to help a woman buy a reconditioned sewing machine so that she can run a little business and feed her family.

  Twenty-five pounds to give a family a future

• It costs approximately £500 to build two water points that will provide a decent water supply for a village of a few hundred people. This means the women and children no longer have to walk many miles every day to collect water that is often rank and disease-ridden.

  Five hundred pounds to transform a village

• It costs £35 to cover all school costs for a child in primary school for a year.

  A child who can read is a child with a future.

• For £100 a year a teenage boy girl can be taught a skill - carpentry or dressmaking or even computer skills. They become self-sufficient and the whole community benefits. The future looks brighter.

  £100 for a real chance in life.

Pretty good value for money eh?