Judith Taylor explained in an interview for her employer's staff magazine in 2002 how African Leprosy Aid began:?MY FATHER started his own charity in 1988 to help people in Africa with leprosy? says Judith. He has raised over £60,000 and not a penny of this ever goes on administration ? he and my mother (then aged 82 and 80 respectively) are still running fundraising events locally, near their home in South Derbyshire.?A Wesleyan Reform lay preacher for 58 years, although by 2002 he rarely preached due to frailty, Alfred Foster started his charitable career in 1987 when a local church asked him and his wife, Rosemary, to run a day centre for people with mental problems to give their families a break.
Starting out
Alfred also used old car tyres to make soles for sandals. He cut out the soles by hand with a Stanley knife, then used donated material to make the uppers, and discarded bladders (used by Pirelli to test tyres) for the soles.?Mum and Dad persuaded the people attending the day centre on Tuesdays (known as the ?Tuesday Club?) to knit washable bandages for use by leprosy victims,? says Judith proudly. ?As well as teaching Dad to knit, Mum taught him to use her old manual Singer sewing machine, and he designed and made brightly-coloured oven gloves (leprosy and the treatment for it both cause loss of feeling, so sufferers cannot tell when their hands are being damaged by hot cooking pots). ?In yet another ingenious project, Alfred became the bane of the local optician?s life when he discovered that night shades were needed when leprosy sufferers? eyes were left permanently open ? asking the optician to grade all the spectacles that were donated to make best possible use of them.This tireless devotion to good causes didn?t go unnoticed. ?My sister and I are so proud of Dad,? says Judith. ?We applied for an MBE for him and he received it in 1997 for services to charity. Even though his sight is now very poor (through age-related macular degeneration) and he is not very mobile, he still does all he can for the charity. Dad wastes nothing. I can guarantee that every single penny of each and every donation will be put to good use.?
AFRICAN LEPROSY AID
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