Trustees
The Trustees of the Bridge Project are responsible in law for ensuring that it is solvent, well run and delivering the charitable outcomes for which it was set up. Here one of them, Ian Platts, described why he took on this highly-responsible voluntary role.
I was born and grew up in Bradford and was educated at Bradford Grammar School. With a business and a family in the town I have recently felt, like many of us do, that Bradford isn’t the town it was.
Over the last few years we, and a number of friends, have had break-ins, which the police ascribed to drugs-related problems. The natural reaction is to leave this with the police and complain when nothing improves – we all moan when we have difficulties.
But as a society we have to make changes and provide active help – and I came to the conclusion that that I wasn’t putting anything back into the community.
So when I was invited to become a Trustee of Bridge I was able to bring with me a good knowledge of Bradford, not only socially but also from the viewpoint of its business community. I add a commercial element to the operation of Bridge: I feel that by being more “business aware” and commercially-minded the operation could become far more effective.
So, I see my role as one of proactive initiative to push the commercial aspects of Bridge along and particularly to build up the Trustees in a way which gives us a variety of the skills we need guiding Bridge at a Trustee level.
I see the problems we face with drugs and their associated problems as being ones the whole community has to face and tackle. The business community in Bradford in particular can help enormously.
From a charity aspect why does a town so far from the sea have its own “City of Bradford” lifeboat and fail to put money into solving a problem close at home? Somehow lifeboats are “sexy” and we aren’t, so I feel that one of my tasks is to change that perception and with it sort out some of the funding issues with which we are faced.