CELEBRATING 40 YEARS OF HELPING SOME OF THE POOREST COMMUNITIES IN THE WORLD.
Recent News.
I have updates for those of you who may have been worried about the situation at the school for refugee children that we support on the Thai border with Myanmar following the earthquake which had caused damage in both countries. Fortunately we heard from them a few days ago to say that, whilst the camp had felt the tremors, their buildings being low rise and made largely with bamboo had not suffered any serious damage. Apparently bamboo is able to flex without breaking so an effective construction material in an area prone to earthquakes.
We would like to thank all those of you who volunteered on Friday and Saturday April 4th & 5th to stand outside shops in Tadworth, Walton & Kingswood with collecting cans for TWOAT also those who were kind enough to donate some money to them. We raised over £500 which will be increased to over £600 with the addition of Gift Aid.
TWOAT was delighted to be included as one of the three beneficiaries of a Charity QUIZ evening held in Kingswood Village Hall on March 1st. We understand that the TWOAT share of the profits is likely to be of the order of £400. We are very grateful to all those involved in the organisation of this event and those who participated on the night.
We had alarming news during February from Emmanuel School which we support and which provides education for refugee children in a camp on the Thai Border with Myanmar. It seems that as a result of the cancellation of US Aid Funding all the medical facilities in the camp have been dismantled and the staff withdrawn. There is also concern about the continuation of water and food supplies as at least half the cost of these have previously been provided from the US.
We will provide further information as soon as we have details and will launch an appeal if needed to restore the water supplies to the school where TWOAT already funds the school lunches.
TWOAT was very grateful to St Peter’s for organising the Light Up Walton Event during which TWOAT received donations which will add in excess of £550 to our funds including Gift Aid.
TWOAT held its Annual Meeting & Dinner in St John’s Hall on Saturday 9th November with some 62 supporters in attendance. Treasurer, Antony Hawker, reported that in the previous 12 months the charity had provided record levels of support to some 20 or so projects totalling just over £42K with income from donations, bequests and events being slightly below this. He described the very generous response from members to the appeal to increase the amount of donations via recurring payments and stated that, with the promised “quadruple” matched funding and Gift Aid, this would add in excess of £21k to TWOAT’s income with most of that in 2024/25. To open the report Antony presented click here 2024 TWOAT ASM Report
The guest speaker for the evening was Joe Robinson a representative from Fisherman’s Rest a new charitable project supported by TWOAT focusing on ecological improvements in Malawi. Joe told the audience that the money TWOAT had already given had gone towards both planting trees and providing materials to create efficient wood burning stoves. He described the very worrying levels of deforestation that are occurring in Malawi with one factor being the use of tree wood as fuel for both cooking and heating. Many poorer people use inefficient open fires which consume wood rapidly. The charity is training villagers how to construct more efficient stoves and providing them with the bricks to do this. This has many benefits – less trees are foraged and less time wasted by the women, whose main task this is, thus freeing them up for other activities such as receiving basic education. The charity is also encouraging the planting of new fruit trees, such as mangoes and papayas, which can provide both nutrition and a source of sustainable fuel for the stoves. Some fruit trees can start to be productive in under 3 years due to the suitability of the local climate. Fishermen’s Rest has 70 employees in Malawi and has established tree nurseries producing seedlings and has already arranged the planting of over 100,000 new trees. Committee member Sally Nethercott had introduced the project to TWOAT as a nephew had participated in one of the volunteer activities organised by Fishermen’s Rest to enable people from the UK to visit Malawi and participate in their projects. It was a useful coincidence that two visitors from Malawi had accompanied one of the TWOAT supporters to the event and they were able to confirm the challenges faced by Malawi in maintaining its forests. From the questions and interest shown by the audience it was clear that TWOAT supporters were delighted with this new project that TWOAT will continue to support.
Chair Mike Fox concluded the evening by referring back to a TWOAT Newsletter published in 1999 that detailed the £8800 that TWOAT had been able to pass to projects in that year with £1,000 being the maximum given to any one project. He contrasted this with the current situation where 5 of the projects had received over £3000 last year and one as much as £7000. He noted that these larger donations were in support of ongoing activities such as teachers’ salaries, school lunches or medication for Epilepsy sufferers where it was necessary for TWOAT to give commitments for ongoing support up to 2 years ahead. This was the reason why TWOAT was so grateful to those who had responded to the appeal for recurring donations. He thanked the audience, TWOAT committee members, volunteers and others who had contributed to the results achieved. He mentioned that another opportunity to donate to TWOAT would occur at the Lighting Up Walton event starting at 5pm by Mere Pond on Dec 6th and moving on to St Peter’s Churchyard where carols will be sung with refreshments available.
Donations made at the Annual Meeting will yield over £1500 to TWOAT once Gift Aid is added.
TWOAT is very grateful to be one of the charities benefiting from the International Food event being held on Sept 28th in Kingswood Village Hall.
Unfortunately some supporters could not access the Zoom session about the Pastor’s School project in Sierra Leone on 16/09/24. You can view a recording of it by clicking on this link Pastor School.mp4
On Sunday June 16th Shirley and Kevin generously opened their garden for us at Old Oaks in The Glade Kingswood. Our grateful thanks go to them as of the order of £750 was raised for our projects.
April was a very busy month for us. Derek Parson’s kindly opening his garden for us at Meon House, 4 Meon Close on Sunday April 14th which raised over £300. On the 19th and 20th April during the mornings volunteers with collecting cans stood outside shops in Tadworth’s High Street and Cross Road, Kingswood’s Waterhouse Lane and Walton Street Walton and raised just over £600 which will increase to £750 with Gift aid. Many thanks to those who stood (some in rain) and those who gave.
On Sunday April 21st we were generously invited by Keith Lewis to sell teas in his garden at 41 Shelvers Way from 2pm – 5.30pm when it was opened as part of the National Garden Scheme. We raised just on £150. We were also able to raise money again in Keith’s garden on August 4th – many thanks to Keith.
Our two walks raised about £2000 which will increase by up to 25% with Gift Aid.
May will see the first of our John Allison Memorial Sponsored Walks on Friday May 17th. It will start from The Sportsman in Mogador at 9.15 am and continue to Gatton Bottom visiting places of interest there and returning to The Sportsman for lunch. The full walk will be about 6 miles long but there will be a shorter variant just over half this distance if desired. Please contact me or walk leader Dick Shelley via dickshelley@ntlworld.com or by phone 01737 817930, if you are interested in participating or visit our donate page if you would like to sponsor a walker.
Our Bottle Stall raised just over £300 with quite a few bottles left over for future raffles.
On Saturday May 18th we will have our usual Bottle stall at the Walton May Fayre – we would appreciate bottle donations , anything from bath salts to brandy, which can be dropped off at Nethercott Opticians in Station Approach, Tadworth by lunch-time on the 17th May or collected by me (email me mike.fox2@ntlworld.com or phone me on 350452).
June will see the second of our Walks over the same route on Saturday June 8th.
I am delighted to tell you that the Lighting Up Walton event collection raised £202 which will become over £250 when Gift Aid is added. This could fund treating something like 300 x children attending a medical camp we are supporting in Kenya in January 2024 against an unpleasant parasite called the Jigger Flea. This is a picture from a previous camp we helped to fund.
Our Christmas appeal is to enable us to continue and even increase the support to projects we have supporting children in Africa, India, Asia and Eastern Europe.
In January on the 13th a Quiz is being held in Kingswood Village Hall in aid of TWOAT and several other charities. Doors open at 7pm for a 7.30pm start. Tickets at £25 include a fish & chips supper and can be obtained from www.ticketsource.co.uk/KVCA , hopefully you might form a team with some friends.
We have heard from the Little Sapphires School which we support in Madagascar that, Montesque, the teacher’s child whose medical bills we covered that he has now fully recovered. Click on his name for a recent photo Montesque
Our Sponsored Walks, Street Collection and Bottle Stall at the Walton May Fayre raised approaching £4000 many thanks to all those that helped and donated.
We have heard from the school we support in Thailand that more child refugees have arrived from Myanmar so their pupil numbers have increased from 196 to 208. We will need to review the amount we send them to fund lunches for these new victims of the government’s bombing campaign in the Keren villages.
We are very pleased to report that our Quiz Evening raised nearly £900 – we are very grateful to all those that participated and to St John’s Church for the use of their hall.
We had some distressing news from Madagascar that a six year old child who we support to attend the Mothers’ Union Little Sapphires Nursery School had been hit by a motor coach. He was taken to hospital and treated there and it is hoped that he will be able to walk again. He is the son of one of the teachers and he is being taken to school on a mattress otherwise he would be at home alone. TWOAT has offered to contribute towards the £200 costs of his hospital treatments which were paid out of school funds as a loan to the parents.
Our planned St George’s Night sing-along event for April 22nd has had to be put off until another year as we were unable to assemble enough people for the choir.
One of our supporters has told us about an opportunity to acquire some reduced cost older model solar powered hearing aids that would be suitable for use at St John’s School for the Deaf in The Gambia where it is difficult for the children to obtain the special batteries modern hearing aids use. We have sent details to the school and are hopeful that they will be able to make use of them. The aids will cost about £30 each plus shipping so we will need to see how many the school might want.
We are very sorry to report that our Hon. Secretary for many years, David Northway, passed away on December 4th. A memorial service was held for him at the Good Shepherd Church on January 5th which would have been his 84th birthday. TWOAT typically assigns each project we support to one committee member whose role is to maintain contact with them and to report to the committee concerning their particular needs. During the 28 years that David was on our committee he acted as our interface to 7 projects – 3 in Africa one each in Ukraine, India and Argentina and one transnational charity called “Motivation”. David had himself identified that “Motivation” should be supported by TWOAT. Its goal was and is to provide low cost mobility aids to assist poorer communities in many countries often by setting up low cost local production facilities for wheelchairs utilising parts typically found in bicycles. The two other projects, David supported, that are still current are Berega Hospital & Orphanage in Tanzania and the Pastor’s School Project in Sierra Leone.
Our 40th Annual Meeting was attended by over 70 people and thanks to their amazing generosity has raised over £2,000 for our projects. Thanks to Jean Tattam and her family we were able to celebrate our 40th Anniversary with an amazing cake.
Which was cut for us by Jean Elcome who was a member of the first TWOAT committee in 1982.
This year our Christmas Appeal is for money to help us to fund lunches for pupils at several of the schools which we support in Africa and Asia. Parents around the world are battling with the same cost of living crisis that we see in the UK but they are typically starting from circumstances that were already fairly desperate. Children can learn more effectively if they are not already famished so this is an investment for the future as well as helping families cope with present difficulties.
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