Water Works Management Committee

Suzanna.

Suzanna van Schaick (Chair)

Suzanna has extensive clinical experience as a doctor, varied educational and teaching experience and insights from recent Voluntary Service Overseas. She has:

  • over 30 years experience in general practice in the UK, 6 months in hospital Accident & Emergency in 2001-2
  • 20 years experience writing & producing medical educational materials, using multiple media for varied audiences
  • 2 years (08-10) working to help improve health knowledge and practice in rural Cambodia, including very varied teaching and training with an interpreter in a low resource environment
Lesley Cohen.

Lesley Cohen (Secretary)

Lesley worked as a Clinical and Forensic Psychologist for 34 years until her retirement in 2018. Her role included clinical practice, assessments for court, training, senior professional management and professional regulation. In retirement Lesley is engaged in a range of voluntary work including with a refugee charity and at HMP Nottingham. Lesley has always supported Water Works and has made visits to the project most years since 2013. At home, she has supported the Management Committee by taking the minutes of meetings and is now Secretary.

Sam Riley

Sam Riley (Treasurer)

Sam ia a heritage professional and masters student at the University of Cambridge. He has extensive experience of organisational governance, and works with charities in the UK and abroad; most notably in Ghana where he was involved with education in rural regions.

 

Ayari.

Michael Lee (Committee Member)

After a long career in social care, Mike took early retirement at the end of 2010. His specialism was in research, evaluation and data processing, although his last job as one of the Heads of Service in the Children's Department of Nottinghamshire County Council also encompassed communications. He is particularly concerned that in the 21st Century there is still a need to develop the provision of a basic utility like clean water in certain parts of the world - hence his wholehearted support for the aims of Water Works.

Linda Chisale (Committee Member)

Linda is from Lilongwe and worked for Water Works as project assistant and community mobiliser. She is a great communicator and helped to provide the link between the project management and the villages. She is now living in San Francisco, studying Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management.

Ian Smout

Ian Smout (Committee Member)

Ian is a chartered civil engineer and was pleased to join the Water Works Management Committee in 2018, when he retired after more than 40 years working on water engineering and management in developing countries. He started his career working for an international consultancy company and then joined Loughborough University in 1987. In addition, he has been a trustee of a disaster relief charity since 2008.

Amanda Henning

Amanda Henning (Committee Member)

Amanda joined the Water Works Charity board in April 2019. Her background is in Nursing and Public Health. She previously has worked in Malawi running a mobile medical clinic in rural villages within Lilongwe District. She currently resides in Lilongwe, Malawi, where she is able to contribute to the health and hygiene aspects of the programme.

Patrick McMahon

Eunice Nafere (Committee Member)

Eunice is a water and sanitation specialist by profession. She has over 10 years’ experience in implementing development and emergency projects that span from urban and community WASH, emergency response/recovery and nutrition projects,  including the response to Malawi’s 2019 floods and  the Covid 19 pandemic. She was Programme Manager for Water Works in 2022 and 23 before being recruited as a commonwealth citizen to become a soldier in the British army. Now in the UK, she was welcomed onto the management committee in 2024.

Peter Phiri

Peter Phiri (Committee Member)

Peter was programme manager for Water Works in 2019 and 2020 before taking up a senior management position with Water Aid in Malawi. Fortunately, he agreed to continue involvement with Water Works as a committee member. Peter has spent much of his professional life working in a project management role and has worked on a range of development projects and programmes covering rural and urban WASH, infrastructure development covering transport and irrigation and labour-intensive community development programmes. Peter is Malawian and lives close to the programme location.

The Water Works Management Committee would like to thank:

Mike Wilkins.

Mike Wilkins (former Treasurer)

Water Works was fortunate to have Mike, with his immense experience in senior positions in the voluntary and public sector,  as treasurer  from 2012. Unfortunately, he decided to stand down due to illness arising from covid-19

Tim.

Tim Bell (Former Chair)

It is with immense sadness that we have to announce that Tim Bell died in September 2018. Tim stepped down from his position as Chair at the AGM in June, owing to uncertainty because of his illness. He remained committed to Water Works and even nominated us as one of two charities he wanted friends and family to support in his memory.

The Management Committee would also like to pay tribute to Ben Cohen, who designed this website. Tragically he died in November 2018.

We would like to thank his close friend, Martin Tasker for maintaining the site and Chris Hellen for updating it.