Changing Horizons
The Juniper Trust ~ A Charity
with Global Reach
Our Philosophy
The Juniper Trust's remit has always been to work
alongside local communities. Talking to village communities, to educationalists
and thinkers, Angela Locke came to see that large-scale inappropriate aid could
sometimes be counterproductive; disempowering local communities while
distancing Westerners from the very people they had come to support. Over and
over again the word 'partnership' would come up in discussions, the need for
equality in cultural contacts with the so-called developed world, for someone
to listen to what was needed and appropriate for that community. From the
beginnings of the Trust, the principles of listening and learning from local
understanding and of responding to needs at village and community level,
whether through volunteers or through small-scale sustainable projects, became
the watchwords of the Trust. As the Trust grows and has expanded its remit into
projects across the world has become a model for sustainable and sympathetic
aid development at grassroots level.
Why the charity is called the
Juniper Trust
Many years ago, Angela Locke was given a branch of Juniper by a little girl as she stood on hillside in Nepal, watching the sunrise touch the Himalayas; one of the greatest sights on earth. She had been struggling to communicate with the little girl in her language, and her small companion had wished to give a gift of friendship in return. Juniper is the sacred herb of the Buddhists, and grows too in the valleys in Cumbria, where The Juniper Trust was eventually founded and is still based. That memory of the gift of Juniper from a little girl at sunrise seemed an appropriate symbol of the friendship and mutual respect between equals in the global community, the guiding principle behind the innovative and visionary work of The Juniper Trust.
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