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DIRECTOR
MIKE STOREY - TFN Director
I started life in 1962 with
a brief spell in the sunny climes of the West Indies but returned to England
to spend my formative years at one of the first and largest comprehensive
schools in the not so sunny West Midlands. At the age of seventeen I decided
that I wanted to have some real work experience and to see what it was
like to earn a living. The following week my ever-obliging father arranged
for me to travel to Nigeria where I was to work for two months on a landscaping
project at the University in Sokoto. This was not quite what I had in
mind but it was a significant and eye opening period in my life.
Having thoroughly enjoyed
the experience, but thinking it best to postpone the real world of work
for a few years, I progressed to study architecture at Portsmouth and
later at Edinburgh University. It was also whilst I was in Edinburgh that
I met two of the people who would go on to become founding members of
The Funding Network, Paul Kelland and Karina Upton.
Together with most of my
architectural contemporaries I then moved down to London to enjoy the
fruits of the late 1980's property boom only to have a very rude awakening
in the early 1990's when suddenly we found ourselves, along with the
rest of our profession, out of work. At this point in my career I returned
to Africa to work on the refurbishment of a hospital at Gombi in northern
Nigeria. Again this was a formative experience in which I was able to
see for myself the political and logistical difficulties of delivering
aid to remote areas.
Five years ago I decided,
together with my wife and another life long friend from Edinburgh, to
set up our own architectural practice in Battersea. We turned out to be
fairly successful at what we were doing and found ourselves in profit
at the end of our first year. It was around this time that TFN was formed.
The idea of investing some of our profits in social change projects through
the Funding Network was a very appealing prospect. It fitted with the
ethos of our practice, and the added attraction of seeing how, collectively,
we could have a significant impact on improving the quality of people's
lives was irresistible. And so our practice became the first 'corporate
member' of TFN. One unforeseen benefit of this has been the very positive
response of our employees to our membership of TFN. There is a genuine
appreciation by all that this is a worthy course of action, and as a way
of promoting the benefits of philanthropic activities and raising awareness
of social change issues to a younger audience, it has proved to be invaluable.
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