More fundraising news from Sarah Johnson and her fantastic employers, optical lens manufacturer Essilor (See Eyecare breakthrough in Jappineh). 

Sarah has organised a charity quiz night and raffle on Sunday 20th November at her local (just Google The Wheatsheaf, Thornbury to find it on their events page), for which a lot of local businesses have donated prizes for the raffle such as meals at local restaurants, bottles of wine and so on - including the landlord of the pub who has donated 4 bottles of champagne for the winning team! 

And as you might imagine, Sarah has been heavily involved in a charity day in Essilor, which will be raising money for the AoT and children in need.  Essilor has bought 5 tickets for the FA Cup 2nd semi final and there will be a raffle for those. Staff are also wearing something spotty to work and paying a pound towards the two charities.

And all of this on top of the fantastic SEVEN boxes of children's frames which are on their way to The Gambia as we speak, making another invaluable contribution towards the growing eyecare programme the Trust is supporting in Jappineh and elsewhere.

Thank you again to Sarah and everyone at Essilor for so much superb support.
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A chance encounter in The Gambia has led to yet another exciting development at Jappineh - eye care clinics, the first of which saw 172 people checked in just five hours!
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Sarah Johnson, an employee of major optical lens manufacturer Essilor UK, was on holiday in The Gambia when she overheard a bar-room conversation between our own Kira Dalton and a friend. Kira was explaining that she had received a donation of a box of spectacle frames but had no lenses for them. Sarah explained who she worked for and returned to the UK determined to help...

After a number of meetings with colleagues at Essilor, it was agreed that Sarah could collect unwanted single vision lenses from the business. In all she was able to gather together about 600 lenses to take back to The Gambia in May.

Kira then arranged for Sarah to deliver them in person, meeting with staff at The Sheikh Zayed Eye Care Clinic in Kannifing and then travelling with a group of 8 opticians and optical nurses to Jappineh. 
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The team then ran a full days clinic, seeing 172 patients in all, many of whom were able to receive glasses or even referrals for essential cataract surgery. With Jappineh being a 5 hour drive from the nearest optician, these were all people who would receive no eye care at all if it were not for this kind of clinic. In those circumstances failing eyesight can simply mean the loss of livelihood and potentially the loss of the only income for an extended family of a dozen or more.   

Since Sarah returned from The Gambia she has received donations of over 500 frames, and is continuing to collect frames and lenses. Essilor have also arranged to run a charity auction next year with the aim of raising enough money to build an optical clinic in Jappineh, a wonderful prospect.

Our huge thanks go to to Sarah, to Essilor and to everyone who has supported their efforts on this wonderful project.
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On the run 07/04/2011
 
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Well done to Laura Evans, who recently completed the Edinburgh marathon and, in doing so, raised a magnificant £1,500 for the Hilary Emery Nursery School (HENS) - the school named in memory of Laura's late mother.

As always with the AOT, all of the money raised by Laura's amazing effort will go directly to our work on the ground, supporting the education and welfare of the 105 young children at HENS. 
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To find out more about the school and the work that Laura and others like her are supporting, visit our Hilary Emery Nursery School page.


Or to add your own support to our work at HENS and other schools like it, please visit our support and donations page.
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What a celebration! 

Not only Jappineh people, but most of the surrounding villages were all standing at the main roadside to greet us as we arrived. They then sang, drummed, danced (of course I joined in) all the way to health centre. 

When we arrived there, many more people were waiting under the canopy for us. After the usual slight delay for prayers, lunch, waiting for the elders and the governor's representative to arrive, the speeches started off around 3 pm. Interspersed with more entertainment, they went on until well after 6 pm. 

From what I could understand (and some were translated fully for me) everybody is just so, so, very grateful that they finally have an ambulance at Jappineh. It was great to hear, even if the amount of praise was reaching embarassing proportions! 

As everyone was dispersing and going to look at the ambulance, a donkey cart pulled in. On it was a disabled woman, her wheelchair and 3 relatives. They had come around 5 km from a nearby village. Ansu immediately diagnosed severe anemia, possibly with heart failure and told her family she needed an immediate blood transfusion and to be on oxygen (which we can't do at Jappineh). 

Imagine the relief of everybody concerned when we told them we could whisk them all off to Soma Hospital by an ambulance which had only just arrived. And when When we phoned the next morning, she was doing fine. 

So, within a couple of hours of its arrival at Jappineh, the Mel 1 ambulance has already saved a life! To see the full story behind Mel 1, click here.
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On Sunday 5th September, a Greggs team comprising 11 cyclists and 4 runners took part in the Wolverhampton half marathon to raise funds for the Hilary Emery nursery school in Talinding. 

The team managed to raise £3,200 (including gift aid) which was a fantastic achievement. 

AoT directors James and Alan were later invited to the Greggs bakery to receive the cheque from Antonia Ermoyenous, Ian Bagnal and Steve Emery on behalf of all the Greggs participants and sponsors.
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Alan & James receive the cheque from Antonia and Steve.
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Helpers make up the Greggs 'goodie bags' for all the half marathon participants. 
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Steve helps to issue the bags.
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Some of the Greggs team get ready for the off! 
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Ian Bagnal, Jane Salacinski and Steve take a well-earned break after their efforts!
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There's been plenty of progress to report over the last month on our newest project at Talinding.

The roof is already nearly done, the doors and windows are in, toilets are built and all of the classrooms have been plastered.

To find out why this project is so important to the children of Talingding, click here.

To make a donation and support this work, click here.
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The trust team in The Gambia, led as ever by Kira Dalton, has embarked on another exciting project - this time building a completely new three-classroom nursery school and compound for children in Talinding.

The facility is badly needed; when Kira first visited the existing JTT Nursery School she found 134 children aged from 3 to 7 years crammed into a single room with no space for proper teaching or play activities.

Read the full report here, and please do stop to think whether you can make a donation to the project (our donation page, including online facilities, is here).

Every new project we undertake makes a world of difference to the lives of these young children, but we are only a small charity and every intervention  depends on the goodwill and support of our individual and corporate donors. We are grateful to each and every one.
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Royal Spa Brass is holding a Heroes and Villains family concert at All Saints Church, Leamington Spa, on Saturday 8th May, with all proceeds going to the African Oyster Trust.

This is a great opportunity to support our work in Africa while enjoying a fun night out, so please put the date in your diary. The concert starts at 7.30pm and tickets are priced £7 (£3 concessions). Visit www.royalspabrass.com for more details.

Thank you to Iain Masson and everyone at Royal Spa Brass for their wonderful support.
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By Alan Dick

Just in time for Christmas, a consignment of boxes arrved in the Gambia marked for the attention of Kira Dalton. They contained a whole load of 'goodies' which were the result of generous donations of clothes, books and so on from various people and organisations.
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Photo One:

Birmingham City Football Club kindly donated football strips, tracksuits and training gear.

Expect a Banjul branch of the Birmingham City Supporters Club to open soon!
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Photos Two and Three (right and below): Children of Bothwell Primary School near Glasgow, and Berkswell Primary School near Coventry rallied round last year to support young Gambian children less fortunate than themselves, by donating t-shirts and football strips.

All were greatly appreciated as you can see right and below.
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Photo Four (below): Last year, Eleanor Elcock, a student from Lichfield and former part-time worker at Woolworths, managed to persuade her local store, prior to its final closure, to donate childrens clothes and gym shoes to the African Oyster Trust.

The photo shows just some of the many happy recipients.
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By Alison Calvert, founder of the Mariama Mae Nursery School

Honor and Roger, two very dear friends of mine, live and work in  Jerez in the south of Spain. Last year they put on a curry evening to raise money for the school with the help of Hansa, and her mum Pushpa, who flew over from London just to bring spices and cook for days.  By popular demand they were doing it all again and in April I flew over to join them due to a ticket that had very kindly been donated to me so that I could be there.

What a team they are!  When I arrived we all sat around their kitchen table to have a ‘kilo meeting’, deciding how many kilos of tomatoes, potatoes and all sorts of other vegetables we needed.  This resulted in a trip to the wonderful local market the next day where boxes of local vegetables were bought and then delivered round the corner to Roger and Honor’s beautiful home that they were opening to over 120 people who had bought tickets for “The Grand Curry Night Fundraiser”.

Before the 8.30pm start on Friday the most beautiful food had been prepared under the guidance of Hansa and Pushpa who calmly made a wide range of mouth watering delicious starters, all had been sampled beforehand just to make sure they were ok of course!  These were then followed by curries to die for with wonderful flavours and extras all authentically made and displayed.  Honor and Roger had also made their speciality to add to the menu, a beef curry and chicken tikka with the most incredible flavours.  For desert they had prepared mango ice cream and gulabjamans which were incredibly popular.

People's comments said it all: “this food is out of this world”, “I’ve never tasted Indian food like this before”, “This is so good, how do they do it and there is so much choice”.

Everyone, including Roger and Honor’s kids, Tom and Alex, and their mates, had worked so hard together as a team to make this fundraiser the wonderful success that it was.  The people who had come to the event had a wonderful evening and were very generous when buying raffle tickets for batiks that I had brought from Africa, and local donated bottles of sherry and brandy.

This was just such a great evening and I felt so lucky to be there, not just for the food, but for the fun of preparing it beforehand, and the opportunity to talk to people who had come last year and then again this year.  It was fantastic to be able to show them photos of what their donations had achieved and talk to them about what we would be able to do with this years £2600 that they had raised, thankyou everyone.  See you all next year!
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