Hands Across The Water

Peter Baines was a NSW Police forensic investigator for 22 years and led the Australian and International teams following the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004. Peter was deployed into Thailand for several months leading the teams in the identification of the 5395 bodies that we recovered. On his last rotation into Thailand he met a group of kids who had all lost their parents. He then made a commitment to raise funds to contribute to the building of a home for them. That was the start of Hands Across the Water the charity. Since that time we have established ourselves in Australia, New Zealand and Thailand as a legal entity. Collectively we have raised over $25m AUD and importantly never spent one cent of donors money on admin or fundraising. We have seven different properties that we support in Thailand and our commitment is long term. We support the kids into and through university and currently have 47 kids studying varying courses across Thailand Uni’s. Much of our charity fundraising is done via 800km bike rides that we lead in Thailand that are open to individuals and companies alike. This raises funds to meet the $1.8m annual recurrent funds that we need each year to support the children and communities. In 2011, we established a company now called Hands Group which sits next to charity and undertakes its own commercial activities to generate funds (not through donations) and these funds are used to employ the Australian based team and meet all the administrative and fundraising costs. This keeps the separation of the funds clean and ensures all donations goes to the kids. A massive contributor to the operational costs of Hands Group is the Future of Leadership, an annual Conference that is hosted in seven locations across three countries and still growing. Profits made above the operating costs of Hands Group are donated to Hands Across the Water. It operates as a true social enterprise.