About Us
Our Story
Signpost was started in 1992 when a young Church Army Officer, Kerry Dixon, saw first hand poverty in the Philippines. Seeing children die simply because they didn’t have the same life chances that those in the west have made him realise that something had to be done. This led to the start of a child sponsorship programme.
From those early days, Signpost has grown and worked with many generous individuals, supporting children and families who are affected by poverty. We have gradually shifted the emphasis of our work from supporting individual children to supporting whole communities – after all “it takes a whole village to raise a child”. For more than 25 years we have supported many communities taking action against poverty.
In the late 1990’s Signpost responded to the widespread slaughter in Rwanda, and spent ten years working with the traumatised orphans in the country. Then in 2004 when a Tsunami devastated south east India we began working with communities that had been displaced, helping them to build resilience.
Over the past few years we have been funded by Comic Relief and the Big Lottery Fund (BLF), enabling us to build rain water harvesting systems and toilets and run programmes that combat hunger and malnutrition.
We recognise that poverty is not just an issue for the global south, but that it is also an issue within the UK. Alongside our overseas work, Signpost took the opportunity in 2003 to relocate to Dundee to work with the Hilltown community as it tackled poverty. In 2014 we relocated again to Whitfield, in the North East of the city, where we share our building with other charities who are working to tackle the issues of poverty in Dundee and the local community.