Tools for Self Reliance

Tools for Self Reliance (www.tfsr.org) is an international development charity in the United Kingdom which recycles and refurbishes tools and sewing machines and supplies them to partners in Africa in conjunction with training programmes.

Tools for Self Reliance has a network of volunteers in the UK who refurbish donated tools and prepare kits suitable for use by trades people and small-scale enterprises in Africa. The main recipient countries are Tanzania, Uganda, Ghana, Zambia, Sierra Leone and Malawi.

Tools for Self Reliance was founded in 1980 and is based in Netley Marsh, Hampshire, and is a registered charity. Its patrons include Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Tools for Self Reliance was a member of the anti-poverty campaign Make Poverty History in 2005. The Chief Executive Officer of Tools for Self Reliance is Sarah Ingleby.

The original values behind the establishment of Tools for Self Reliance were outlined in a book, Questioning Development by Glyn Roberts. This argued that Northern volunteer-sending organisations should analyse "underdevelopment" in terms of power, and should act in solidarity with manual workers in the Third World. In November 1978, Roberts and other returned volunteers joined with students in Portsmouth in house-to-house collections of unwanted tools. In June 1979, a first consignment of 1,400 refurbished tools went (with shipment paid for bu UNESCO's Youth Division) to SIDO, the Small Industries Development Organisation in Tanzania. Tanzania was selected because of its development philosophy and policies, outlined most notably in the Arusha Declaration (1967) by President Julius Nyerere. Many who got involved with Tools for Self Reliance found the principles inspiring. (One of these pioneers was Eddie Grimble who, thirty-four years later, is still actively involved!)

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