Jane Tewson: Difference between revisions

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Jane Tewson CBE (born 9 January 1958) is a British charity worker and the originator of several charitable organisations and ideas for community strengthening in the UK and Australia.

Tewson is the daughter of Edward Tewson and Jocelyn (née Johnston), a doctor in rural South East England.^{[citation needed]} With dyslexia, she left Lord Williams's Grammar School in Thame without qualifications, but later attended lectures at Oxford while working as a cleaner in the city.^[1]

In 1981, aged 23, Tweson founded Charity Projects in London, with funding from Lord (Tim) Bell and numerous other donations. Its initial focus was tackling homelessness in Soho.^{[citation needed]}

Tewson had worked in a refugee camp in Sudan in 1985, where she was pronounced clinically dead after contracting cerebral malaria.^[1] Her response to the African famine, Comic Relief was launched on Christmas Day 1985 from the refugee camp in Safawa, Sudan. By 2005 Comic Relief it had raised £337 million for famine relief and community development, notably for Africa and disadvantaged areas of the UK.^{[citation needed]}

In 2000, Tewson moved to Melbourne, Australia, when her husband, Charles Lane, became CEO of the Myer Foundation, a philanthropic organization^[2] and then the Dept. of Victorian Communities. At the time she was suffering from ovarian cancer but survived after operations in Melbourne.^{[citation needed]}

Tewson works on some inner city Melbourne projects, and elsewhere, through Igniting Change (formerly Pilotlight Australia). The book Change the World for Ten Bucks was published and German and British editions have also been released.^{[citation needed]} The Dying to Know project and book (2009) is about coming to terms with death, and negotiating grief.^{[citation needed]}

• In 1999 Tewson received a CBE from HM Queen Elizabeth II for her foundational work with Charity Projects and other projects.^{[citation needed]}
• In March 2000, she was named by The Times newspaper as one of the top ten innovators of the 1990s in the UK.^{[citation needed]}
• In 2007 she was named Social Entrepreneur of the year for VIC and TAS, by Ernst and Young.^[3]
• Beacon Awards Winners 2010, Philanthropy Advocate Award, UK^[4]

• Igniting Change
• Jane Tewson on Woman's Hour, BBC Radio 4 2010
• We prepare for birth — why not prepare for death? in The Daily Telegraph 15 March 2010
• Peter Stanford in The Third Sector, 22 March 2010
• Interview with Richard Fidler, ABC March 2009
• The go-between Interview with Rod Myer in The Age, 30 September 2002