LPS School in Madagascar thank TWOAT
CELEBRATING 40 YEARS OF HELPING SOME OF THE POOREST COMMUNITIES IN THE WORLD.
January 2026 News
The TWOAT Christmas Appeal was amazingly successful thanks to the four times matched funding up to a total of £10,000 plus a further £1500 that was provided by three special donors. We normally raise about £1500 in total but over £6,000 was donated by supporters helped by collections taken at both the Walton Lighting Event at St Peter’s and the Good Shepherd Christmas Lunch. . The Appeal total exceeded £16,000 and I can give you some insights as to the impact this will make on the five projects in our appeal.
Fruit Tree Planting in Malawi: I have already spoken via video link with our contacts in Malawi and told them we will be able to fund the planting of at least an additional 2,000 fruit trees. A mature Mango tree produces fruit which can be sold for between £16 and £80. The wide variation in price is because as the season progresses there is a glut in the market whilst early fruit sells at a premium. Just as a comparison the average monthly wage in Malawi is about £120 and a farmer might have 30 x Mango trees in addition to growing maize etc.
Breakfasts for Refugee School Children from Myanmar: Our original objective was to fund 2 breakfasts a week (on Mondays and Fridays) for 40 weeks = a school year. It now seems likely that we will be able to fund breakfasts for both the remainder of this academic year and all of next year as food supplies in the refugee camp are still severely limited and likely to remain so.
Restoring Sight to a Child in Uganda: We are now hoping that we might be able to fund as many as 16 optical interventions for children including several sight restoring cataract operations. We are aware that the project had a waiting list for funding children needing treatment but we need to confirm with them how soon all the operations can be fitted into the hospital schedules.
Sponsoring a young Tanzanian to attend Trade School: Sponsoring a young person or child to attend skills training or education requires ongoing sponsorship in future years. At the Mtandika Trade School the courses typically last two years. We are arranging to sponsor 8 new students to start at Mtandika and will aim to have a mixture of girls and boys with various skills such as electrical engineering or hotel management being acquired.
Sponsoring a Child to attend school in Zambia or Kenya: Sponsoring a child to attend a school is the most long lasting type of commitment that TWOAT makes. We are currently supporting sponsored children in both Zambia and Kenya. From a financial planning perspective the longest commitment that TWOAT can realistically make is 3 years although a child’s schooling is typically longer than this. We are now funding 2 additional children, one at each school, and are building this into our commitments for the next 2 years starting in September.
Mike Fox
Autumn 2025 News.
Unfortunately 2025 has been in many ways catastrophic for overseas aid. Not only have both the UK and US Governments cut back the monies they have previously provided to eradicate poverty and disease around the world, but many other countries have also taken similar decisions This is not surprising given the perceived need to divert government spending both to re-armament and to dealing with the cost impacts of people migrating to the developed world to escape from warzones and repressive regimes.
Paradoxically the 12 months up to Sept 30th have proved to be the best financial year ever for TWOAT’s own fundraising. Final figures will be presented at our AGM on Nov 8th but currently it looks as if the total raised will be in excess of £51k. The main reason for this was the one-off impact of two of our supporters very generously offering to double match fund the annual value of new Standing Orders (SOs) set up by other supporters during 2023/24. This matched funding was mainly paid to us in this financial year as the final totals depended on whether new SOs were activated right up to the end of Sept 2024. These one off payments added at least £10k to this year’s total so we cannot assume that we will achieve the same again. The reason why we wanted to encourage more regular giving was because we have entered into a number of substantial ongoing commitments.
The three largest commitments this year are to pay £8,300 to the Little Sapphires School in Madagascar
At least £7,000 to the Emmanuel School for refugee children on the Thai border with Myanmar
and £6,000 to Mtandika Trade School in Tanzania
a total of £21,300.
This amount is probably more than half our current fundraising rate and there are 18 other very deserving projects, some also with commitments.
“Students really thank TWOAT from the bottom of their hearts for their daily food is fully of nutrition. “
“They pray for TWOAT members and everyone who participate for giving their food. “
“They also said TWOAT lunch
is more tasty than food in their houses.“
excerpts from
Emmanual School Myanmar Report 2025
Thanks to our supporters’ generosity fundraising activities including our Annual Dinner, our Street Collection, the Bottle Stall, two John Allinson Memorial Sponsored Walks and several open garden events have held up remarkably well.
We were especially grateful to the four owners of the gardens who helped make these events possible – Diana & Mike Gannon and Keith & Elizabeth Lewis in Tadworth, Sarah and Robin in Kingswood and Derek Parsons in Tadworth who sadly subsequently passed away and whose family generously donated the collection at his Memorial service to TWOAT.
If you have a garden that could be opened for TWOAT in 2026 please do contact us.
We have also been generously supported with funds raised by two events in Kingswood Village Hall – a Quiz and an International Food Evening.
We also benefitted from very generous donations from St Peter’s Church in Walton and from Kingswood Walton & Tadworth Horticultural Society.
Sadly this year several supporters have passed away, most recently Margaret Phillips, a previous committee member who left us a generous bequest. Bequests are an important source of income for many charities and a lovely way to be reminded of the generosity of previous supporters no longer with us.
Mike Fox
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