"I was an impecunious student doing a gap year as a teacher in  Uganda with VSO. The only other 'Muzungu' teachers - ex-pats, were a Scots couple, Tom and Anne Welsh. Many were the nights that I shared their dinner table on the banks of the Nile. Then one day they declared they were going travelling in Tanzania in their beat up old VW Beetle. They offered me free passage, providing I would curl my six foot four inch frame into the back of the car and tend to their new born babe for the journey. I jumped at it. And so developed my thirst for travel that has never left me. Even the love of babies too!"

Jon Snow, Journalist and Presenter

"Doing the job I do, you get to see the very best of humanity under the very worst of circumstances. Years ago i was covering the earthquake in Bhuj in India. It was a devastating time, where loved ones, alive and dead were being pulled from the rubble around us.

We were a hastily despatched television crew and as such not entirely well kitted out for the week of filming...

I will never forget, as we trudged through the broken lives of people who had lost absolutely everything in the quake, how many times we were offered water and food by people who had so very little. It was such a gift of absolute kindness. Our whole crew found the magnitude of generosity hard to swallow."

Anita Anand, Presenter and Journalist

"Wet behind the ears, fresh out of uni and with barely a hair on my chest, I was parceled off to India by my Dad to research and write our first guide book to India. I'd never been to India before, let alone written a guide book. Overwhelming would be an understatment! A friend's parents had suggested I spend my first night in the circus that is Delhi with some distant acquaintances, a retired English couple who are great Indophiles and Delhi-ites. Never having met me, they took me under their wing, found me free office space, put me up for five months, shared their stuffed social life with me and left me their house while they spent some of the summer back abroad. They never asked for a penny. Their unquestioning generosity to a complete stranger cushioned my landing and made the book possible. I am forever grateful!"

Toby Sawday, BBC2 Presenter