Barbara Frost

‎Barbara Mary Frost, DBE (born 1952) is a British retired charity executive. From 2005 to 2017, she was the chief executive officer (CEO) of WaterAid. She had previously been CEO of Action on Disability and Development, and had worked for ActionAid, Save the Children and Oxfam. Quotes Barbara Frost on WaterAid’s continuous growth and success ‎Barbara Frost reflects on WaterAid’s ongoing expansion and achievements 22 April 2016 It is a good return, but it also gives us a constituency, which means we're not dependent on government funding or grant. Water and sanitation might not be a priority for grant makers in a particular year. We want to keep that unrestricted percentage at about 65 per cent because it gives us a huge amount of strategic flexibility and a greater degree of certainty. We have a very diverse portfolio of income. We work a lot with communities, we do a huge amount of advertising to get public support and our database of supporters has increased to about 375,000 people who bring in not only financial support but also wider support. We looked at them for compliance, attitude, how they kept abreast of what was going on in the market. They responded to the criticism and whether we felt they would deal with out supporters in the same way as we would directly. We think opt-in should be regular and unambiguous. All the words that are in the European legislation, but we don't want to annoy our supporters by asking them to opt in when they have been supporting us for years and it would seem peculiar. Barbara Frost The accidental aid worker ‎Frost passionately discusses the charity’s goal to provide safe water, sanitation, and hygiene for all within 15 years. I assumed they wanted another engineer in the post. I was told that wasn’t the case, they wanted someone to lead on women’s issues, girls’ empowerment, people’s rights and community mobilisation. On that basis I was very interested but I knew I was coming down with a terrible case of malaria and had to get my application in within a couple of days while I could still function. So I was absolutely delighted to be offered the job. What I love about WaterAid is that while we are absolutely passionately committed to doing everything we can in terms of poverty eradication. We think change can often happen through humour, so every year we try and do stuff on World Toilet Day. We are good at using humour to draw attention to a serious fact, that girls are dropping out of school because they have nowhere to wash and change when they are menstruating and it’s a really taboo subject. I took opportunities and I took risks, and I wasn’t afraid to try different things. External links ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎Category:entrepreneurs ‎Category:1952 births ‎Category:Living people ‎Category:entrepreneurs ‎Category:Chief executive officers ‎ Category:Businesswomen from the United Kingdom ‎ Category:Women born in the 1950s ‎Category:British women chief executives ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎