Helen Welsh

Helen Welsh has been a member of Holy Trinity for the last seven years or so. Before that she ‘grew up’ in the Church of Scotland and had a brief spell of going nowhere, church-wise. A visiting teacher and her son – Mari and Austin Glamser from Texas – introduced her son Harry to HT, and Harry brought her along, and it’s all been plain sailing since then. During her time she has sung in the choir, been Child and Adult Protection Officer, and done a stint on Vestry.

Helen is a social worker and has had a varied career involving adult education, training, and some research. For many years she has wanted to work overseas, but a combination of factors came together in 2009 – loss of permanent job, divorce, only child all-but-independent – so she applied to VSO.

Helen was accepted by VSO and matched to a placement in Zanzibar, working in a development project funded by the Aga Khan Foundation. This project provides an umbrella organisation for local voluntary organisations, and helps them improve on their efficiency and effectiveness. The general focus is on ‘sustainable livelihoods’ and there is also a focus on tackling gender inequalities. HIV/AIDS is an ongoing problem so some of the work centres around health education issues.

Helen sets off on 30th January 2010 for a two-year stint, and has set up a blog at this link to make it easier to keep in touch with people back home. The blog is public, so anyone can view it and subscribe to updates, so please bookmark the page and spread the news. And please send her back the occasional message as she will be very glad to hear from you.

You can add your comments to the blog and use this as a means of keeping in touch with Helen. To do this you need to become a member of the Opera community, but this is free, and you’ll be led through the simple sign-up process. Note that you don’t need to run your own blog or change your browser!