Suubi Trust

Helen Lay has just joined us in Kampala as a VSO working with the Finance and Management team. Helen is planing to stay 2 years which is a great commitment…

I was born in Lusaka, Zambia and lived in Livingstone (near Victoria Falls) until 1974 when my family moved ‘back’ to England – arriving in cold, wet Northumberland was a bit of a shock to me and I was cross about it for at least 2 years! After a ‘gap year’ working for Unilever I did a degree in Archaeology & Anthropology at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. As career opportunities for anthropologists were a little limited my first job was as a Finance Graduate Trainee with Coca-Cola Schweppes Beverages and I completed my CIMA (Management Accountancy) training with them. Having originally thought that being a Management Accountant would be a good stepping stone into more general roles within industry I found that I really enjoyed working in Finance – mainly because I liked getting involved in all aspects of a business and am a bit of a control freak!

Over the last 17 years I’ve worked for Whitbread Beer Company, DMGT (which publishes the Daily Mail, Evening Standard and Metro) and most recently Telegraph Media Group where I managed a team of 12 Management Accountants. Despite being very happy and settled in London I have always wanted to come back to Africa – particularly after a holiday in Zimbabwe/Zambia 10 years ago which included a rather emotional visit to the school in Livingstone where my parents worked as teachers. I had always been aware of Voluntary Services Overseas (V.S.O) who send skilled people rather than money to Africa, Asia and the Pacific Islands but had thought that they only sent teachers and medical professionals. But about a year ago I saw one of their ads which was targeted at people with finance, I.T and management experience and after a big think about whether this was the right time for me to go away for 2 years I took the plunge and applied.

Having gone through V.S.O’s rigourous selection and training progress I was offered a choice of 2 placements – one as a Management Accountant with the International Medical Group in Uganda and the other with an Community Youth project in Zambia. After a lot of internet research and general dithering I decided to come to Uganda and here I am. I arrived here on the 23rd February and Kampala already feels like home – mainly because everyone I’ve met has been so friendly and welcoming. I’m looking forward to working with the IMG and IMF teams and seeing how my role here can fit in with V.S.O’s objectives of ‘Sharing Skills, Changing Lives”. I think I’ll learn a lot from my colleagues here and I hope to contribute the benefit of my experience in financial management and reporting.