An Oar-some Cause

Charlotte (front) with her rowing partner Jess

An

OAR-SOME CAUSE

Charlotte Harris (2009 Cohort) is the first recipient of the TTS Foundation Adventurous Expedition Award, which was launched to support alumni in audacious projects that require teamwork, endurance, resilience, and tenacity. What inspired her to apply for it? We chat with the plucky young woman to find out more.

What have you been up to since graduating from Tanglin in 2009?

I went to Cardiff University to study history and absolutely loved it! After I graduated, I moved to Chicago to take up an internship at Diageo, a multinational beverage alcohol manufacturer. I left Chicago in 2016 and moved to London to take up a global procurement opportunity within Diageo and have since held numerous roles over the last five years.

How did Tanglin encourage you to take up charity initiatives?

The first big challenge I ever did was at Tanglin when I was in Year 12. I was part of the group that went to Ladakh and trekked up the mountain range Stok Kangri in the Himalayas. It was one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life, and I still remember all of us deciding to sleep outside our tents one night. Part of that trip was to raise money for one of the local schools in Ladakh, we brought three years’ worth of dental equipment for the school and met the children. They danced for us and it was honestly quite emotional to watch; the memory really stayed with me! I think doing charity initiatives like that when you’re younger and seeing the impact does inspire you to continue to do more growing up, it has for me!

” “ Part of the fun is learning something new!

Why did you choose to row for charity even though you and your partner were novices?

We didn’t necessarily pick rowing; we knew we wanted to raise money for the homeless and we knew we wanted an enormous challenge to help facilitate that. I learned about the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge (TWAC) through Diageo, which owns Talisker, the title sponsor of TWAC. The event has raised over £16 million for charities since 2016 and one of my colleagues had done it the year before I signed up, raising over £100 000 for his chosen charity. Jess (my teammate) and I had completed a challenge in October 2019 called White Collar Fight Club where you train for three months as a boxer and get in the ring for a fight against an opponent in front of 1500 people. The aim was to raise money for the charity ‘Mind’. Once that was over, we looked at each other the next day and said: “What on earth are we going to do next?”. We wanted it to be bigger and better so TWAC was the perfect fit. It didn’t matter that we’d never been on a rowing boat, seeing as we weren’t boxers before the White Collar Fight Club. Part of the fun is learning something new!

Why did you choose to raise funds for Shelter and Women’s Aid?

Homelessness is a cause close to our heart. There are at least 320 000 homeless people in the UK today and that doesn’t take the hidden homeless into account. Shelter told us that the UK is in one of the worst housing crises it has ever faced and it’s only going to get worse. Shelter is a phenomenal charity providing support for the homeless and another charity doing just as much but for domestic abuse is Women’s Aid. Jess and I were pretty set on just supporting Shelter because of our passion for fighting homelessness but what we realised quite early on was how big the threat of homelessness was to those suffering from domestic abuse. It is the number one reason that women find themselves homeless and the more we looked into the work Women’s Aid does, the more we knew we had to help. I think the most shocking statistic was that three women are killed by their male partners every fortnight and with Covid and the lockdowns, domestic violence has gotten significantly worse. That’s why we’re doing all we can to raise the money for them!

Why do you think the TTS Foundation Adventurous Expedition Award is so beneficial?

It was incredibly beneficial, especially since it came at a time during our campaign when we were struggling to kickstart our fundraising efforts. The money paid for our first two months of race fees. If we weren’t able to pay, we wouldn’t have been able to continue with the campaign. It wasn’t just the financial help though, Tanglin and more specifically Cecilia (Director of Development), helped us consolidate and focus our energy in the right direction as well as gave us key connections to ensure our fundraising went from strength to strength. It also gave us a well needed confidence boost in the first few months given that Tanglin was our first official sponsor! ■