Forty years ago Laurie Read, charity chairman, worked as a teacher in Sierra Leone before returning to the UK to take up medicine. His love for this little African country never left him. At that time, newly independent Sierra Leone was developing and full of promise for the future.

However, the subsequent years of dictatorship and civil war brought the country to its knees and made it difficult for Laurie keep in touch. Upon retiring from the NHS in 2005 he and his wife, Sue, made a visit to Sierra Leone to see whether he could work there as a surgeon. It also gave Laurie a chance to visit the Peninsula Secondary School where he had been principal and had taught science so many years earlier. He was horrified by what he found. The Waterloo Schools Charity was founded as a direct result of that visit.