Page 80 - Powerlist 2020

Profiles

Beverley DeGale and
Orin Lewis

Founders, African Caribbean Leukaemia Trust

Husband-and-wife power couple Beverley and Orin are the
founders of the African Caribbean Leukaemia Trust, one of
Britain’s leading blood cancer charities.
A personal tragedy led the couple to set up the
organisation. In 1996, they discovered their eight-year-old
son Daniel would need a life-saving stem cell transplant to
treat his acute leukaemia. The numbers didn’t look good –
out of nearly 300,000 potential bone marrow donors, there
were only 550 black or mixed-race people registered. It
meant that the odds for Daniel to find a match were only one
in 250,000. The forward-thinking couple decided to launch
a campaign to increase the number of black and mixed race
people on the register. In 1999, Daniel became the first black
person in Britain to receive a stem cell transplant from an
unrelated donor. The success, however, was short-lived.
Even though Daniel was able to live a healthy life for several
years, he died when he was 21.
Yet the couple weren’t deterred, and have remained
committed to the cause. They have raised the number
of black and mixed-race donors to almost 60,000, have
saved numerous lives through finding donor matches, and
& Third sector
raised thousands of pounds for stem cell, blood and organ
Public Sector
donations. Their work was honoured with joint OBEs in 2011.
Over the last 12 months, the charity has also saved over
20 lives through finding unrelated matched stem cell donors
going through the process of donation, as a result of joining
the registers via an ACLT donor registration drive.
During October 2018, ACLT marked 10 years since it
lost Daniel. Despite it being an emotionally charged and
challenging time for Beverley and Orin, ACLT successfully
planned and executed a number of key events to
commemorate Daniel’s memory.

80 Powerlist 2020