Recent News
We organised both a tea party and a curry dinner in St John’s Hall, Tadworth, on Saturday March 30 to help us support a project in India. They were a great success in total attracting over 100 people to hear Revd. Anita Matthews, Trustee of the charity called CRS, which is based at the Cathedral in Kolkata, speak about its work amongst the very poorest slum dwellers in that city. Perhaps the most moving story concerned a community of Dalit people (also known as Untouchables) who had set up a small, “illegal”, shanty town alongside a railway line on a commuter route from the outskirts of Kolkata. The town is “illegal” because the community does not own the land and it is in any case in a highly dangerous location with roughly built dwellings being literally a few feet from fast moving commuter trains. Anita had asked one six year old girls what she thought about the trains rushing by and received the reply “they kill people”. CRS are trying to arrange some sort of basic schooling for the Dalit children to improve their language skills as otherwise they would be excluded from official Indian government funded schools. Anita explained that education is the key to helping the children of slum dwellers to have a chance for a better life. Chairman Mike Fox noted that whilst India was growing as a country in economic strength it was still home to more impoverished individuals than the whole of Africa. The event raised over £1,300, a quarter of which came from extra donations made by participants after they had heard Anita’s inspiring talk.
The Dalit community living by a railway line in Kolkata.
Some photos from both events are included below:
Reverend Anita Matthews addressing the meeting
over 80 people attended the evening Curry Dinner.
About 30 people attended our Tiffin Tea which was also addressed by Reverend Anita Matthews.
Barbecue
We are very grateful to Roger Ponsford and the team of helpers who staged a Barbecue in aid of TWOAT in Roger’s garden in Walton. . Around 40 people attended and many compliments were paid to Marilyn and Duncan Reid concerning the excellence of the lamb steaks which had been barbecued by Duncan marinated in a special sauce created by Marilyn. The bar organised by Alan Corrigal and the raffle, which included a painting donated by Roger Ponsford, both contributed handsomely to the £469 which was raised.
Roger Ponsford and the painting he donated
Alan Corrigal manning the bar
Marliyn wearing an apron who was responsible for the delicious sauce.
We are delighted to tell you that our Street Collection raised £533 and our joint St George’s event with St Cecilia Chorus raised £700 for us and £300 for them – many thanks to all those that participated or donated. We also raised about £278 selling teas in Keith Lewis’ garden when it was opened as part of the NGS scheme.
Click on an image to enlarge it.
Our St George’s Event in the Good shepherd Hall
Primrose Drake in blue and Sophie Shore in red singing the Flower Duet from Lakme during the St George’s Evening jointly staged in the Good Shepherd Hall by Tadworth & Walton Overseas Aid Trust and St Cecilia Chorus.
Our Christmas Appeal has enabled us to fund lunches every day for the 30 children at the Nursery School we support in Madagascar and one lunch per week for all 150 children in the school we support for refugees from Myanmar (Burma), in both cases we have provided the funding for the next 12 months. We would like to be able to continue this lunch support beyond 12 months for both schools and to increase the number of lunches per week for the 150 Burmese children as they have no other funding to provide lunches. It costs about £40 to provide lunch every day for one child through an academic year so please consider setting up a Standing Order to pay for one or more children’s lunches.
We received a very generous donation from a company called Five Bees Ltd who are based in Dorset. A contact in Tadworth had told them about us. Our grateful thanks go to them.
Our Quiz Evening in January raised over £450 – many thanks to those that participated and those that helped organise it.
Our Christmas Appeal raised over £2,000 so we have been able to offer to fund for a year the provision of free lunches at two of the school’s we support – one in Madagascar and one for children of refugees from Myanmar.
The choir from Walton Primary School sang beautifully at the Sing Carols event organised for us by Christchurch. Including the Gift Aid, which we will claim, over £180 was raised for our Christmas Appeal. This is sufficient to fund lunches for 2 classes of thirty children (i.e. one class at each of the two schools) for a whole month. The objective for our appeal is to be able to do this for a whole academic year so we are making good progress towards our target – an excellent result thanks to the children and the generosity of those attending.
Thanks to the generosity of those attending our Annual Social Meeting we raised nearly £1200 in donations and raffle receipts. Our guest speaker Andrew Pemberton from the HELWEL Trust described one of the initiatives they support in Kwa-Zulu as being the establishment and stocking of libraries with educational toys to be borrowed by younger children in some of the very poor rural communities. We asked him to supply us with more details of these and we might use some of the money raised to support this activity.
Tadworth & Walton Overseas Aid Trust was very grateful to Roger Ponsford for organising a BBQ in his Walton garden to raise funds on its behalf during Sunday 10th September. It had been intended to be a Lamb Spit Roast but, in view of the forecast for unsettled weather, Roger very sensibly changed the plan so conventional barbecues could be used instead to cook lamb chops and sausages. It did rain heavily at times during the morning of the 10th and that would have created problems as a Spit would need to have been roasting from 8am onwards. As it was the heavy rain held off during the afternoon until the food had been eaten and raffle drawn so it was only those clearing up afterwards that got wet! It was, however, very much worth it as TWOAT funds had benefitted by more than £700.
BBQ Attendees (click pictures to enlarge)
Roger Ponsford, in the centre in shorts, welcoming participants at the BBQ he organised in aid of TWOAT, whilst Duncan Reid tends the BBQ and Mike Fox looks after the bar.
TWOAT is also delighted to have helped facilitate 20 woollen blankets, baby clothes and teddy bears knitted by the Church of the Good Shepherd Mothers’ Union Knit & Rip group to be taken to the orphanage TWOAT supports at Berega in Tanzania.
We raised over £318 selling Teas in the garden of Keith & Elizabeth Lewis at 41 Shelvers Way when it was opened as part of the National Garden Scheme on August 6th which was a record for us and followed our raising £280 at the same venue on April 23. Many thanks to Keith & Elizabeth.
For details and pictures of our two Sponsored Walks in May see here.
Our Auction of Promises on April 22nd raised over £3,000 – for a list of the businesses and supporters who contributed visit here and to St John’s Church for the use of their hall.
We will be able to send an extra £500 to the projects we support as a result of the Quiz Evening we held in Christchurch Hall use of which was kindly given to us free of charge by the Elders of the Church.
We raised over £1200 in donations, which will increase to more than £1500 with Gift Aid, at our Annual Social Meeting. We heard talks from Liz Noble of the Rush Project about how our support is helping to combat the Jigger Flea parasite and from Michael Agius about the school we support in Tanzania.
Pictured below Michael Agius speaking at our ASM with Liz Noble listening intently.
We raised over £200 when Sue & Tim Edwards kindly opened their garden for us. Pictured below the raffle in progress.
We raised £160 during our Teas & Talks event in St John’s Hall on Aug 24th and made some new contacts for TWOAT.
We raised over £230 selling Teas, cakes, ice cream and jars of Mary Heath’s marmalade when Keith & Elizabeth Lewis opened their garden to the public for charity as part of the National Garden Scheme. Many thanks to them for the opportunity.
Our second Sponsored Walk attracted 29 people bringing total participation across the two walks to in excess of 40. We are hoping to raise around £2,000 once all the sponsorship money has been collected.
Picture taken by walk organiser John Allinson.
Our stall at the Walton May Fayre & Pageant raised just over £200 – many thanks to those who donated bottle. The result was a bit down on last year as the weather did turn fairly dismal but we have some bottles left for future fund raising. We shared a gazebo with TWRA but at various times it needed two people to hold onto it and prevent it blowing away! The pictures show John Allinson and Gillian Hein of TWRA doing this!
Ist 2016 Sponsored Walk featuring Digby the Labradoodle.
Tadworth & Walton Overseas Aid Trust’s big event this Spring was a St George’s Day Celebration on Saturday April 23rd. This was staged in the Good Shepherd Hall in conjunction with members from St Cecilia’s Chorus who led the singing of some well-known British songs whilst attendees also enjoyed Bangers & Mash and Fruit Crumbles. It was a great success with over 80 attending. The evening generated around £900 for TWOAT projects and £300 for St Cecilia Chorus.
Click on the pictures of our St George’s Celebration to enlarge them
TWOAT are delighted to tell you that our Street Collections in Tadworth, Walton and Kingswood raised a record total of £649 despite some typically April showery weather. Many thanks to all those that donated.
Our Quiz Evening in January raised over £500. We are very grateful to the Elders of Christchurch URC who allowed us to use their hall without charge.
Over 90 people purchased tickets for our Ladies Fashion Show in the Riddell Hall on Monday 5th October. This was organised for us by Travelling Trends and resulted in takings of over £1,000. Many thanks to all those that attended and those that helped organise and sell tickets.
The Spit Roast event kindly hosted and organised for us by Roger Ponsford raised over £500 for our projects. Many thanks to Roger and his team.
Sue & Tim Edwards Open Garden on Saturday 19th Sept raised over £200 for us. This proved to be an excellent new event for us – many thanks to Sue & Tim seen here handing over the collection to me in their Knot Garden. Click on the picture for a larger image.
To see news from all our projects visit here.