A UK Operations Manager has begun a three month secondment to Transaid’s Professional Driver Training project in Zambia and is helping the charity to improve the quality of training delivered by the programme.

Louise Gunby, Operations Manager for Yusen Logistics, has begun a three month secondment to Transaid’s Professional Driver Training project in Zambia

Louise Gunby, who is Operations Manager for the Leeds distribution centre at Yusen Logistics, is on secondment to the Industrial Training Centre (ITC) in Zambia, supporting the centre in its aim to reduce the traffic fatalities in sub-Saharan Africa through professional HGV, PSV and forklift truck training.
Whilst on secondment Louise will be responsible for helping the ITC team standardise training materials, identify areas of improvement in the teaching, scheduling and planning of training activities and processing the project’s data.

“I’m looking forward to the challenge and I hope to make a real difference to the project while I am in Zambia. Sharing the skills and knowledge I’ve built up over my career in logistics with others will be hugely rewarding,” says Louise.

In addition to the day-to-day tasks, Louise will have to contend with Zambia’s power outages – sometimes as little as 5-6 hours of electricity per day – and none of the automated processes that are standard in the UK.

“It’s going to be interesting seeing how they overcome the lack of power but I’m excited to be going back to basics with paper-based and manual systems like we had in the UK at the beginning of my career 27 years ago,” adds Louise.

Neil Rettie, Road Safety Project Manager for Transaid, and who will work alongside Louise during her secondment, says: “We’re grateful to Yusen Logistics for donating their time and expertise to help us develop the project and further enhance the skills of those at the ITC. Louise will be a welcome addition to the team and we would like to thank her in advance for her valuable contribution.”

This is the first time Yusen Logistics has seconded one of its employees to Transaid’s projects since becoming a corporate member in 2014. More recently, the company has participated in the Christmas appeal through designing its own festive card, fundraised during its senior management conference and held a customer golf day in aid of the charity.
For more information and to find out how you can support the charity visit www.transaid.org.

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