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PGS managing director Paul Eyles and commercial director Dave Bayliss with staff and pupils at the Draktscho Vocational School for children with special needs in Thimpu, Bhutan


Mercy mission travels to roof of the world


By Jon Griffin


A historic Birmingham healthcare firm linked up with a Kitts Green logistics company to improve the lives of disadvantaged youngsters in a remote Himalayan kingdom – with a donation of 900 pairs of special shoes. Aston-based stoma products


experts Salts – whose origins in the West Midlands date back to 1701 – donated a container packed with


£75,000 worth of special orthotic shoes for mentally and physically disabled children in the remote Asian state of Bhutan. Bosses at the Aston firm put


their heads together with PGS Global Logistics to help ease the plight of needy youngsters at a special school in the secretive Himalayan state after Emma Slade, chief executive of UK charity Opening Your Heart to Bhutan, had contacted one of her yoga pupils, Salts employee Rebecca Blackwell. But the challenge was how to


get the shoes over to one of the remotest countries in the world – and that’s when Kitts Green-based PGS Global Logistics stepped in. PGS managing director Paul


Eyles and commercial director Dave Bayliss undertook the journey of a lifetime to fly out to the Draktscho Vocational School for children with special needs in Thimpu, Bhutan, after arranging for 11 pallets of shoes to be shipped over to the Himalayas. The container took 40 days by sea from Southampton before making the final leg of the journey to Bhutan – a journey that


Shoe people (back, left to right): Peter Salt, Ian Taylor, Emma Slade (Open Your Heart to Bhutan), Robert Salt. Front: Michael Rutland (British Honorary Consul to Bhutan, left) and Philip Salt with some of the shoes donated to the remote kingdom


‘It is a story of two family-owned businesses working together’


took the shoes, worth around £80 a pair, halfway around the world. Grateful for the UK donation,


Bhutan Honorary Consul Michael Rutland jetted to Salts’ HQ in Aston to personally thank them for the donation, and present a hand-made scroll painted by the schoolchildren. Dave Bayliss, of PGS, said: “It is a


story of two family-owned businesses working together – Salts have been a customer of ours for 25 years. “We were proud and pleased to be


a part of this. It was very touching. We went to the school and they put on a lovely ceremony where the children did some local dances.” Peter Salt, managing director


One of the school pupils proudly wears her new shoes


18 CHAMBERLINK November 2016


of Salts Healthcare, said: “The warm welcome and response the PGS team received in Bhutan and the visit by Michael Rutland to our


offices is very humbling. We simply made a donation based on our desire to help children and we didn’t expect anything like a special visit to Birmingham.” Michael Rutland, British Honorary


Consul to Bhutan, said: “No-one expected to receive a container full of shoes. It was an amazing scene to see small children with huge smiles on their faces who had never seen brightly coloured shoes. “The children immediately


slipped them on and paraded around with delight. On behalf of them all I’d like to


thank the amazing generosity of Salts.” Mr Eyles has also agreed to pay


for three much-needed teachers for the school at £5,000 a year for three years after learning that the previous sponsorship from the Finland Government had run out. Bhutan was almost completely


cut off from the outside world for centuries, with foreign tourists finally allowed to enter the kingdom in 1974 and TV only making its broadcasting debut in 1999.


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