Author: Sylvia Holder, Lindsay Swan

Sylvia Holder is the founder trustee of the Venkat Trust, an education charity she established in memory of a young fisherman’s son she met in India. A recipient of the BEM and The Times Sternberg Active Life Award, she lives in Hove and regularly visits the Trust’s projects in South India.Lindsay Swan, a trustee of the Venkat Trust, was Sylvia Holder’s partner in a London PR consultancy for over 20 years. Based in west London, she is involved in therapeutic gardening projects and serves on the Wandsworth Prison Independent Monitoring Board, promoting fair treatment in custody. She frequently travels to the Trust in Kovalam, India.

Health and Wellness

Accidental Lives Unbreakable Bonds Friendship Inspires How to Start a Charity and Succeed

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Accidental Lives Unbreakable Bonds Friendship Inspires By Lindsay Swan Fifty years ago, in the Johannesburg winter of 1975, two women met in a PR agency. One, was an independent, globe-trotting pre-war baby; the other was me, a young Scot 13 years her junior. My chance encounter with Sylvia Holder would spark a half-century of friendship, adventure, and world-changing impact, much of it from Hove, where she settled in 1998 on a self-described “whim.” Our story is now told in our recent memoir Accidental Lives, published by Black Spring Press.  A Friendship Forged in Fun and Fearlessness From our earliest days…

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