Thriving Through Venture was founded by Caro Strover, with support from Dr Nick Maurice OBE, in recognition of the challenges facing young people today as they move into adulthood.
FOUNDING PATRONS
Caro Strover
Dr Nick Maurice OBE
THE THRIVING THROUGH VENTURE TRUSTEES
Jo Del Mar
Josephine (Jo) is a qualified teacher and former university lecturer who studied English Literature, Art History and Museum Studies in Australia and UK before lecturing at Middlesex University and the ICA. She is a co-founder of the Marlborough Lit Fest. She is Chair of Operaluna and Thriving Through Venture. She is also Vice- Chair of Pewsey Vale School and is governor responsible for SEND and Safeguarding children. Jo teaches English to refugees in Swindon and assists Wiltshire Council with integrating Afghanistan families in and around Netheravon. Jo was awarded a Point of Light Award from 10 Downing St in 2016 for her services to the Shakespeare Schools Festival and local schools in Wiltshire and Swindon. She was awarded Deputy Lieutenant of Wiltshire in 2024.
Dania Pegna-Trustee
A qualified lawyer and 26 years working in Asia. While living in Singapore, Dania re-qualified as an international mediator in 2013, in commercial alternate conflict resolution and specialises in educational and employment conflict matters, previously much of it pro bono for the Singapore Mediation Association as a panel member. She holds a master's degree in psychology and has a keen interest in the neuroscience of the teenage brain. Her concern about the mental health and well-being of young people is what drew her to this local charity, where she now serves as a trustee.
Dania’s broader interests lie in health and ecology. She has a keen interest in natural holistic and Eastern medicine and holds a diploma in plant-based nutrition from Cornell University. With a lifelong interest in nature, travel and exploration since being selected onto one of the original Operation Raleigh expeditions in Guyana, South America in 1988 and in 1991 worked with the World Wildlife Fund in the Mafia Island archipelago in Tanzania and in 1994 with the World Bank in Washington DC, looking at sustainable development in China and Tibet before moving to Asia the same year. Dania moved to Hong Kong in 1994, working as a solicitor and in finance, before establishing her own businesses in executive search and property.
Half Dutch, she enjoys speaking foreign languages and taught English as a foreign language in Spain before going into law. She is a passionate gardener, having devoted her time to creating a garden from scratch during the pandemic years and continues to pursue her horticultural interests by volunteering her time as a committee member on the Wiltshire Gardens Trust. She is a mother of two daughters and now enjoys living with her family in Wiltshire.
Bridgit Goldsmith
TTV LEADERSHIP TEAM
Programme Coordinator
Louise Spence – Photography
Louise has been working at New College Swindon for 20 years and is the Head of A-Level Photography at New College Swindon. Louise also runs enrichment programmes for ESOL students (English for Speakers of Other Languages). She is a talented photographer who has exhibited her own work in selected shows, artists’ residences and workshops.
Before starting her Degree as a mature student, she travelled and worked widely in the USA, Australia and New Zealand, which then funded extended trips to India, Nepal, Thailand and Bali. In her capacity as a teacher she has organised and led student trips to Andalucia, New York and Morocco.
“The whole point of taking photographs, is so that you don’t have to explain things with words”
Elliot Erwitt
Why Photography?
For young people, photography is the perfect vehicle to explore much bigger issues. To take good pictures, photographers need to focus beyond themselves to explore and understand others. They have to collaborate, to nurture, respect and care for their subjects, to capture truthful, honest and respectful images. For less confident individuals, the camera also provides an ideal means to access and work with others.
Photography is a subtle tool to explore some of the pressing issues in society today. This project will give the participants a meaningful lifetime skill, but also influence fundamentally their ways of seeing and understanding the lives of others.
'Stories are a communal currency of humanity'
-Tahir Shah in Arabian Nights.