Former infantry officer and business leader Tim Brear takes on new Yorkshire role for disaster response charity RE:ACT

Since then he has volunteered for disaster response charity RE:ACT, formerly known as Team Rubicon, travelling to Sierra Leone, Mozambique and Grand Bahama, one of the areas worst affected by the 2019 Hurricane Dorian.

After briefly stepping back into the business world in 2020 as chief of staff for a London-based intelligence and security agency, earlier this year Mr Brear was asked to take up a new full-time role as RE:ACT’s Yorkshire and North East lead.

"Over the years, this has become a passion and a purpose for me,” Mr Brear told The Yorkshire Post. “This is an incredible organisation because of the people.”

RE:ACT’s 1,500-strong team of volunteers is largely made up of former military veterans who use the organisational and endurance skills they have gained from the armed forces to ensure aid gets to those who need it most as soon as possible. It also has a number of ex-firefighters, paramedics and police officers.

Mr Brear added: “Increasingly, though, we have recruited non-veteran humanitarians and that’s a good thing as far as I’m concerned. It diversifies the charity and softens our appearance when we arrive in another country so we’re not an occupying force of former soldiers.”

There are currently about 30 RE:ACT volunteers in Yorkshire, a number that Mr Brear is keen to grow.

“My role is four-fold”, he said. “I need to recruit and maintain the volunteer base, make sure we are known and trusted, increase financial support for training and equipment within the region, and make sure we are used to support the blue light services when there’s a major incident, whether that be a flood or a major fire.”

He added: “I’m sure there are lots of people at either end of their careers in Yorkshire who are thinking ‘how can I give back, where can I make a difference?’

“We don’t need former infantry soldiers, we just need people who are there for the right reason and with the right motivation.”

A good volunteer, he said, is a caring person who is keen to make a difference, who has the time to volunteer.

The charity operates a three phase training system to make sure it is taking on the right people for the work it does.

Mr Brear is actively looking for venues to carry out its training in the North. “Clearly as a charity we don’t really have a budget to do that but my intention is to run a course in the north of the country in the middle of next year,” he said.

The charity makes its decisions on deploying volunteers abroad on whether it can physically get there safely and whether it can make a difference. If the answer to both questions is yes, RE:ACT will send a reconnaissance team to check it out.

As well as covering natural disasters, the organisation sometimes helps during conflicts. Mr Brear has helped to find warehouses on the Ukraine/Poland border to store aid and organise vehicles to take the aid from there into Ukraine. RE:ACT has also provided medical teams to carry out battlefield first aid training in Ukraine.

“We have also got somebody looking at whether we can bring any value to the situation in Gaza in a safe way,” Mr Brear said. “It’s incredibly difficult because it’s so politically charged that it’s hard to see how we could add value.”

RE:ACT is funded soley through donations. “Our money comes entirely from people and businesses who want to make a difference,” Mr Brear said.

“The more we raise, the more people we can train and the more people we can deploy.” He added: “Unlike lots of other volunteer organisations in the UK who find it difficult to recruit volunteeers, we’re not struggling. We have people waiting to do the training, we just can’t afford to put on the courses to train all the people we’vegot.”

Looking ahead, Mr Brear said he was making progress on his mission for the charity to be known, trusted and used in Yorkshire.

“I’m beginning to get known among the big players in the emergency response sector,” he said.

“My network in business is one thing but clearly when I was in business people in the emergency services weren’t in my network. I’m now building a new network, going to community events and speaking at conferences.”

He added: “From a business perspective, I want people to know that they can make a difference and their business can support us to respond to events in the region as well as abroad.”

For more information, visit re-act.org.uk