Month: August 2005

On the opening day of the G8 Summit, Chancellor Gordon Brown told Elinata Kasanga, a subsistence farmer in Zambia, that governments must take action ‘at Gleneagles and beyond’ to end the scourge of poverty.

Speaking with Elinata, a mother of six, live by a video link organised by Tearfund and provided by Cellhire, the Chancellor said ‘you and your family is one of the reasons why we must take action.”

Elinata had just told the Chancellor that her two eldest children could not go to secondary school and that her family was denied adequate healthcare because the costs were prohibitive.

However, Elinata, who last spoke to the Chancellor via satellite six years ago on the eve of the G8 Summit in Cologne, said there had been some improvements since their last conversation. She told the Chancellor she was pleased that her youngest children could now attend primary school because fees had been dropped due to Zambia’s debt cancellation. But, she added, without secondary education, the children would struggle to get the jobs they wanted.

To read the story in full, click here: http://www.tearfund.org/News

A YORK firm was today celebrating receiving the ultimate business award from the Queen.

Cellhire, the international mobile communications specialist, received the Queen’s Award for Enterprise and International Trade.

Colonel Edward York, Vice-lieutenant of North Yorkshire, presented chairman and chief executive Tim Williams with the world-renowned glass bowl and certificate signed by both the Queen and Prime Minister Tony Blair at a ceremony at the firm’s offices in Park House on the Clifton Park estate, Poppleton.

Col York said that the award, granted to only 137 businesses out of 879 applications, was as a result of Cellhire’s team effort and he was certain the accolade, which lasts five years, “will help marketing and sales”.

Cellhire, which has been trading since 1987, is now a world leader in renting telecommunications products, and providing innovative and competitive voice and data solutions. It supplied the England football squad, among other national teams, with local mobile phones during the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea.

Col Edward York, Vice-lieutenant of North Yorkshire, presents the Queen’s Award to Tim Williams, chairman and chief executive of Cellhire, Poppleton, York

It also provided voice and data solutions for broadcasters and athletes at last year’s Athens Olympic Games – and provided the Red Cross in nine tsunami-hit countries with satellite phones.

For the past seven years, Cellhire has been the official supplier of mobile communications to the Cannes Film Festival and, with Orange France, is a supplier at the annual Tour de France.

The company is represented around the world, with offices throughout the US and in France, Australia and Japan. A 24-hour after sales and technical service is provided by multi-lingual staff in Dallas, Texas.

Its biggest single market is in the US and last year 65 per cent of Cellhire’s total earnings came from overseas. Over the past six years, overseas earnings by the company have increased by 253 per cent.

The Queens Award ceremony coincided with the annual gathering of the heads of the company’s various worldwide offices, including Martyn Stevens, UK managing director, Gary Riding, chief executive of the US division, Aymeric Bouffard, director general of the French operation, Amanda Taylor, general manager of Cellhire Australia, and Joji Kanemoto, business development director of the recently-started Cellhire Japan.