Who gets it right — and no nonsense?
John Leftley 2015 Quiz Profile
Before he retired, John worked in construction both in the UK and abroad for 37 years — many of them in senior positions. As a result, John knows what he wants, and has the happy knack of leaving those working with him in doubt too. This is fortunate — to say the very least — because many Ugandan construction workers are poorly trained. Lectures from a great height — or distance — don't help. What they need is John — someone with a clear technical understanding of precisely how thing should be done and someone willing to spend time working with them to show them what they need to know. In John's hands, supervision is collaboration not coercion. During the construction phases at NOTDEC Uganda, John spent a number of extended periods there, and the results speak for themselves.
I don't know whether Hawk-Eye has improved the standard of line calls at Wimbledon. But I am certain that knowing what John wants, and knowing that he will check when he's next there, does wonders for NOTDEC Uganda's accounts, and vehicle & equipment maintenance.
And John is what NOTDEC UK needed too, and still needs — someone with a real understanding of construction and related equipment and vehicles, AND the experience and self-confidence to cast aside European templates and to improvise for tropical Uganda when the need arises.
Back in 2007, John and his wife Carlee helped set up NOTDEC UK as a charitable vehicle for child sponsorship. In John's words, their aim was "to help ...orphaned children in a remote corner of western Uganda" giving life, education and "opportunities to young people [there] to enable them to become confident, caring and self-sufficient parents of the future."
John is now chair of NOTDEC UK Trustees and takes particular responsibility for project management, construction, buildings, vehicles and land. This means that he manages NOTDEC UK's project fundraising, building design, purchasing (eg of building materials and vehicles) and some farming activities.