Impact
Fostering, adoption
and opportunity.
That sequence (a stable home, then someone willing to back a 17-year-old with no track record) shapes the work he supports today. It is directed at two things: children waiting for permanent families, and young people who need practical backing to start something.
He has spoken publicly about being adopted, and about dyslexia and dyscalculia, in the belief that it is more useful for young people to hear it said plainly than not at all.
Organisations
Current involvement
The Welch Trust
Founder and Chair of Trustees · Established 2015
Michael and his wife established The Welch Trust, a Scottish charitable trust making grants that support children and young people, with a particular focus on adoption and fostering.
Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption
Trustee
Michael joined the Foundation's Board of Trustees in January 2024. The Foundation works in the United States to find permanent homes for children waiting in foster care.
The King's Trust USA
Advisory Board
Michael sits on the Advisory Board of The King's Trust USA. The connection comes full circle: the organisation, then The Prince's Trust, gave him the £500 grant that helped fund his first business at 17.
Speaking at The King’s Trust
In this video
Recorded at a King's Trust event, Michael talks about entrepreneurship and opportunity, drawing on his own start: leaving school at 16 to work as a tyre fitter and starting his first business at 17 with a £500 grant from The Prince's Trust, the organisation now known as The King's Trust. The talk focuses on the importance of giving young people a first chance to get started.
The Welch Trust
The Welch Learning Centre
In 2017, The Welch Trust funded the creation of the Welch Learning Centre at SDN 4 Penebel in Bali, working with Bali Children’s Project to transform a former canteen into a library, computer and English learning centre.
The centre gave local children access to books, computers and free English classes, creating educational opportunities that had previously been unavailable to many of them.
In this video
Bali Children's Project film recording the opening of the Welch Learning Centre at SDN 4 Penebel, a primary school in Bali. With funding from The Welch Trust in 2017, a former school canteen was converted into a library, computer room and English learning space, giving local children access to books, computers and free English classes that had not previously been available to them.
The Welch Trust
Bringing pioneering epilepsy surgery to Scotland
The Welch Trust partnered with Edinburgh Children’s Hospital Charity and NHS Lothian to help bring MRI-guided Laser Interstitial Thermal Therapy (LITT) to Scotland for the first time. The Trust contributed £140,000 toward the equipment; the full programme was reported at around £220,000.
The minimally invasive treatment gives children and young people with severe, medication-resistant epilepsy an alternative to traditional open brain surgery, with significantly shorter operating and recovery times.
The programme has already changed lives. Angus Bain, one of the first young people in Scotland to receive the treatment in Edinburgh, was able to look forward to life without the weekly seizures that had affected him throughout childhood.
In this video
STV News reports that Angus Bain, a teenager from Fife who was diagnosed with epilepsy at five and had seizures on a weekly basis, has become one of the first people in Scotland to undergo MRI-guided laser interstitial thermal therapy (LITT) at the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People in Edinburgh. The laser technology, previously available only in London and Texas, is minimally invasive and reduces operating time and scarring compared with open brain surgery. The equipment was brought to Scotland with charitable support, including The Welch Trust's contribution through Edinburgh Children's Hospital Charity.