WHAT WE DO

The Mandalay Projects initiative is not a formal charity. In fact, it isn't even an organisation - it's just a group of like-minded friends who have come together with a common motivation and a common objective. We all want to help others, less fortunate than ourselves, and we want to do so in as hands-on and direct a way as possible.

We want to undertake manageable, "bite-size" projects, where both the scale of the effort and the final outcome are predictable and controllable. We concentrate our efforts on the Asian region, with a bias towards projects in those parts of the region where economic prosperity is least developed, and where external voluntary aid is, in our view, most urgently needed. The focus to date has been on Myanmar, but this is likely to change somewhat as we build our list of projects.

We are prepared to spend our own money in order to visit the project sites. We are not put off by logistical challenges, and we are prepared to undertake projects which are "off the beaten track", not least because these are often beyond the remit of the large, formal charitable organisations operating around the region.

Although we are not prescriptive about the sort of projects we'll undertake, we do have a bias towards those which benefit children.

Above all, we want to make a tangible, meaningful difference to the lives of those we work for. We are motivated by nothing other than a desire to help, although positive side-effects include building close and sometimes unexpected friendships, and visiting parts of Asia which are rarely on the tourist map.