![]() Bringing sustainable energy to people for the first time brings huge social improvements to their lives. Overall though, this approach is a clear win-win-win. We learnt a huge amount, both from our mistakes and our successes. Back in the early 1990s, I remember thinking it made sense for the developing countries to leapfrog the phase of using fossil fuel – if a community has got no energy now, why not give it sustainable energy so it doesn’t then need to back-track later? We decided to focus on this issue and over ten years we gave a lot of grants to support sustainable energy initiatives, largely in East Africa. I began to realise that energy was a key tool for helping people out of poverty and putting them on a path to sustainable development. They didn't label themselves as ‘environmental’, but they were finding local, appropriate and sustainable solutions to poverty that also addressed the bigger environmental issues. When the Ashden Trust started, we only had about £50,000 a year to give out, so we began by supporting organisations like Practical Action (then called the Intermediate Technology Development Group) because we liked what they were doing. I didn't want to just be shouting about what’s wrong and finger-wagging, I wanted to find and support the solutions. Seeing the environment being gradually destroyed, and learning more about what was happening from people like David Attenborough, Rachel Carson and Jonathon Porritt made me want to do something, but also to focus on more than just the problems. In my mid-20s I had to take a break from work for health reasons, so I started reading more about the environment and suddenly everything started to fall into place. To find better ways to grow food or access energy, to help in ways that enable people to help themselves. Yes, you do have to give people food in emergencies, but I was most interested in finding sustainable solutions to the everyday problems experienced by those living in poverty. We try and bring these issues together as much as possible because I believe development needs to be sustainable in the widest sense of the term. The areas we fund have evolved over time, but from the outset our twin focus has been on the environment and on people at the bottom of the pyramid, whether in the UK or overseas. How did you decide what causes to focus on? So the seeds of my philanthropic interests were planted long before I had the opportunity to set up a charitable trust. It was a real eye opener to learn that people’s everyday lives are so harsh, even when they’re not experiencing a disaster. ![]() We hear a lot about the big disasters that affect poor countries, but we don’t hear much about the everyday stuff, or we certainly didn’t back in the 1980s. I’d never seen that before or contemplated that people lived like that. India was another world: in slums and rural areas people were cooking on open fires, getting their water from the river and their light was usually a kerosene lantern or candle as they had no electricity. That was an amazing, eye-opening experience and it has influenced me ever since. I took a year off before going to university and spent this travelling around India. She was very passionate and she put it to me so logically: ‘We're cutting down too many trees and burning too much fossil fuel which is adding all these CO2 emissions into the atmosphere that create a greenhouse effect.’ I remember thinking, ‘surely the adult word can sort it out’ and it took me over ten years to realise that nothing significant was happening. She knew that I was interested in science, and I vividly remember her explaining the science of global warming and climate change. I’m a great lover of the natural world, it has always been a passion of mine and I studied zoology at university. When I was about 14, I had a wonderful headmistress who used to give me one-to-one lessons. I inherited the money in the same year that I got married, so my husband and I set up the Ashden Trust together to support our interests and passions. So there was an opportunity to use the family office to start my small foundation and get support from people who were expert at giving money to good causes. My father and his brothers and cousin had set up a system of running separate charitable trusts from one shared office with a great team of staff. I came into some money from my family, which has a great history of giving. My philanthropy began when I was in my late 20s. In 2001, she launched the Ashden Awards, which recognise and support those working on sustainable energy initiatives. She and her husband established the Ashden Trust in 1989, which is one of the 18 charitable trusts and foundations established by members of the Sainsbury family. Sarah Butler-Sloss is an internationally-recognised leader in the field of green energy and sustainable development.
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