The charity Tools for Self Reliance (TFSR) has been successfully salvaging ageing and rusting trade tools for over 30 years, with an impressive 58 TFSR groups across the UK from the Channel Islands to Aberdeen. These dedicated groups collect, refurbish and ship unused tools to partner organisations in Africa where they can be used to train apprentices or donated to craftsmen and women. CEO Jan Kidd explains: “Our shared values are to limit waste in all its forms – in the idea of not having things thrown into landfill, but also in terms of people’s skills, abilities and potential.”

TFSR is the brainchild of academic Glyn Roberts, who noticed the demand for manual, artisan craft tools while working in Uganda. Roberts, along with his mother and a group of friends discussed this back in the UK, and realised there was a wealth of stocked sheds near them in the New Forest, full of unwanted tools that could be put to better use in carpentry, tailoring, auto-repair, building and more.

Roberts’s project came to fruition in 1979 with the main base still in Netley Marsh. It now has over 1,000 volunteers working in different groups: 160 tool collectors, 30 public speakers, and the remaining bulk tool refurbishers.

Partners

The process is facilitated through partner organisations in the six African countries that TFSR supplies: Ghana, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. The focus is on marginalised groups including women, unskilled youths and those living with disabilities and HIV/AIDS who are supported by small charities, although TFSR maintains a main partner in Tanzania: the Small Industries Development Organisation (SIDO). Demand for tools stems from the partner organisations: TFSR only provides items that are unavailable locally (rather than hard to acquire because of cost), so they don’t compete with tool-makers and blacksmiths in the communities.

Waste

Last year, TFSR shipped 45 tonnes of refurbished tools to Africa, with the Netley Marsh group alone saving a further 10 tonnes from landfill by selling for scrap metal. Other groups also sell their own scrap to cover costs, but with 60 per cent of refurbishment happening in Netley Marsh it is likely the additional amount salvaged and sold for scrap elsewhere is around 5-10 tonnes.

Kidd describes the process: “We sometimes cherry-pick, but most people just bring a big box of tools – and other things – I think we’ve had a bit of everything! If it’s pure junk, we scrap it, if it’s useable but not suitable for the project we do car-boots, eBay, other ways of disposing. For example, in specialised sales, we’ve had donated huge spanners which would be for railways – well, your village carpenter isn’t going to use those, but we can give them to people who restore trains. Then the good stuff is refurbished and sent out.”

Funding

TFSR requires some £600,000-700,000 per year to run – of which about 50 per cent is spent on overseas shipping and training costs. With only 10 employed staff supporting 100 times that number of volunteers in the UK, a third of the budget goes on salaries. The remainder is used to maintain workshops and sites, to courier tools to Netley and on media expenditure.

A combination of fundraising, a large membership base and a rented site in Netley Marsh bring in cash, which until recently was sufficient. In the last year or two however, TFSR has been forced to sell more refurbished garden tools in the UK to cover expenses. Kidd explains: “The recession has affected our funding. We don’t have any sponsorship from companies, but we get grants off small trusts – and they have suffered. Last year we dropped by about £100,000, this year we’ve already been told by four biggish trusts – who would normally give £20-25,000 – that they can’t do it.” Surprisingly, however, she adds: “Volunteer and private donations haven’t been affected – if anything our supporters have realised we’re being squeezed, so have increased donations.”

The next aim is to accrue more regular individual donations. TFSR currently has 300 standing orders generating some £3,000 a month, a small but welcome sum relative to a £700,000 annual budget.

Bristol TFSR I went to explore the Bristol TFSR to see how the process all works. This group started in 2002 when local tool collector Maurice Weekes joined forces with tool donator and ex-engineer Rodney Stone. The group eventually acquired an outbuilding at the Kingswood Heritage Museum as its workshop and dispatched its first Solo Joinery Kit, comprising 21 tools, to Africa a decade ago. Since then, the branch has expanded in size, skills and space and, to date, has sent 88 toolkits – representing the refurbishment of some 6,717 tools, 227 sewing machines and 216 sewing kits.

Donations to the Bristol group are rarely landfilled: there are five members who actively sell the surplus – often to local auctioneer specialist Tony Merlin – and irreparable tools are sold to the scrap man. This group is lucky to have a couple of self-dubbed ‘rabid recyclers’ on site, who do some ‘serious eBaying’ of around 100 items per week. Stone notes: “eBay has revolutionised things in the last 10 years – when you’ve got the whole world as a site, things can be sold which would have otherwise gone in the bin.” What struck me was how decrepit the tools looked – these weren’t nearly new, unused tools, and in fact many looked like they would be more at home in a museum. However the tools appear, though, if they were well made with quality design, there is plenty that can be done to salvage them; whether that means sanding off the rust, replacing a broken handle or sharpening the blunt teeth of a saw, they’re all put to good use. For this reason TFSR doesn’t refurbish Chinese-made tools, because they say they don’t have the quality required to last a workman a lifetime.

One crucial function of the project is its ability to sell scrap metal to cover costs and to environmentally dispose of waste materials from the refurbishment process. With the government’s plans to ban scrap metal cash deals, I wondered how much this would affect the charity’s running. Stone didn’t consider this a problem – a feeling that was echoed by the CEO Kidd: “It wouldn’t make any difference to us.” In fact, Stone strongly advocates the clampdown as the workshop site has fallen victim to copper theft.

Development

Perhaps the success and longevity of TFSR lies in its constant evolution: there is a genuine drive to innovate. For example, it now supports training in Africa: “The tools are really important, but training and tools together have a much bigger impact on people’s lives than tools on their own”, Kidd explains. The charity develops with the growth of technology and the changing needs of its partners, such as designing a mobile phone fixing kit.

With its ethos of self-reliance, the project is accessible to all; its website holds a wealth of useful, practical information, which ensures tools are refurbished to a high and regular specification. Kidd adds: “We’ve got a very good manual of how to refurbish a Singer sewing machine which is used by people all over the world – it’s excellent.”

Although the charity relies on skilled volunteers to carry out the refurbishments, one of the aims of TFSR’s 2012-16 organisational strategy is to grow, develop and diversify the UK volunteer programme. It has forged a new link with Age UK through the project ‘Men in Sheds’. “The idea is that men over 50, once they’ve left work, can become isolated – they don’t join coffee mornings or work in Oxfam shops, so they don’t have any work friendships anymore”, Kidd explains. “That can cause men to become depressed and fed up. Men in Sheds gets them back in the community – it’s basically what we’ve been doing for the last 30 years without realising we we’re doing it!”

So if you’re a ‘Man in a Shed’ or indeed anyone with a buzz for recycling, charity or machinery, you can support the cause: the website has an easy way to donate, as well as information about joining your local group. For more, visit: www.tfsr.org