The Trust was formally set up on 16 May 1968.
The inspiration for the trust came from a young volunteer teacher Burke Benton who taught in Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) in the mid sixties.
Struck by the quality of her young African students and distressed by the lack of educational provision for them beyond the age of 16, she and her mother Grace (the Trust’s founder) decided to set up the Budiriro Trust we know today.
Quote from Grace Benton
“I started in my own village with just ordinary sorts of people like me… I showed slides of Rhodesia and I ended with some pictures of children, all so eager for life and what it could offer.
I asked for help. In just my village I had so much promised and so much goodwill, I just had to go on”.
The Budiriro Trust has grown organically from a few original donors and bursaries, to a broad donor base which at one time provided over 100 sixth form bursaries annually and today we fund between 20 and 30.
“I’m so proud of what my mother and grandmother achieved in setting up the Budiriro Trust all those years ago. I am humbled to think of all the hundreds of students who the trust have helped since 1967. I am determined to do what I can to help continue this vital work.”
Emily Chadburn, Treasurer and Grace Benton’s granddaughter
Our Previous Chairman
Edgar Moyo was our Chairman from 2003-2015. He was extremely passionate about helping others, and spent many a year raising funds, establishing contacts and being a fountain of wisdom that the Budiriro Trust depended on.
Zimbabwean-born, he attended Oxford in the 1980s, where he gained an MSc. His Chairmanship was in one of the most difficult times in Zimbabwe’s economic history, where the Trust had to respond to the hyper-inflation as well as the policy of dollarization that was adopted by the Government of Zimbabwe as it has had a significant impact on our student numbers.
He was always steady in his analysis and incisive in his decision-making.