Name Jane Tewson | Production company Comic Relief | |
 | ||
Similar People Richard Curtis, Lenny Henry, Bob Zmuda, Peter Bennett‑Jones | ||
Organizations founded Comic Relief | ||
Jane Tewson CBE (born 9 January 1958) is a British charity worker and the originator of several charitable organisations and ideas for community strengthening in the UK and Australia.
Contents
Early life and education
Tewson is the daughter of Edward Tewson and Jocelyn (née Johnston), a doctor in rural South East England. With dyslexia, she left Lord Williams's Grammar School in Thame without qualifications, but later attended lectures at Oxford while working as a cleaner in the city.
Career
In 1981, aged 23, Tweson founded Charity Projects in London, with funding from Lord (Tim) Bell and numerous other donations. Its initial focus was tackling homelessness in Soho.
Tewson had worked in a refugee camp in Sudan in 1985, where she was pronounced clinically dead after contracting cerebral malaria. Her response to the African famine, Comic Relief was launched on Christmas Day 1985 from the refugee camp in Safawa, Sudan. By 2005 Comic Relief it had raised £337 million for famine relief and community development, notably for Africa and disadvantaged areas of the UK.
In 2000, Tewson relocated from South-East England to Melbourne, Australia, when her husband Charles Lane was appointed director of project funding at the Myer Foundation and then the Dept. of Victorian Communities. At the time she was suffering from ovarian cancer but survived after operations in Melbourne.
Tewson works on some inner city Melbourne projects, and elsewhere, through Igniting Change (formerly Pilotlight Australia). The book Change the World for Ten Bucks was published and German and British editions have also been released. The Dying to Know project and book (2009) is about coming to terms with death, and negotiating grief.