Gambia Trust Noticeboard

A Fun Dog Show, in aid of the Gambia Horse And Donkey Trust, will be held on Sunday, 5th September, 2010. The show will be held at Wick Farm, Blackstone Lane, Blackstone, Henfield, West Sussex, starting at 11.00am.

Bring along your unwanted horse/dog equipment to send out to the Gambia to help the animals, please see website for more information.

For more Information please contact Linda or Katrina on 01273 491430, 01444 819086 or 07818 416664 or email Katrina.

It should be a really good day, so if you have a dog, please bring it and if you don't please support it if you can!

We are provisionally thinking of holding the annual show on the 11th of December and the opening of Calum's road on the 12th of December. If we are very lucky, we may be able to include the opening of the new nursery school that Stella's School Scheme hopes to build as well. It should truly be a time of celebration. This will involve flying out on the 7th and returning on the 21st of December (or the 14th for those who cannot spare the time). Could everyone who is interested in attending either the show or the opening of the road please let Heather Armstrong know if they will be able to come or not as we really need to start planning.

We may need to have a tented village, depending on how many are coming. We do have several tents, so you won't necessarily need to bring one out. We would really love to see you if you can come.

Baby Omar

We are very sad to announce that Baby Omar, the little baby who has featured in some of our newsletters, died on the 23rd July, 2010.

Baby Omar was a delightful little chap, but he had a major heart defect. He was undergoing treatment to try to get him well enough to travel to South Africa for surgery. His sunny little personality enriched our lives. Our deepest sympathies go to his mother and family.

On behalf of everyone at The Gambia Horse and Donkey Trust, I would like to extend our condolences to the family and friends of Cherno Amadou Barry who passed away on the 8th of July 2010.

Cherno Amadou was the Imaam of Karantaba and he was a much respected and loved elder of the community. He had great wisdom and he will be greatly missed.

May his soul rest in perfect peace.

Master Darbo

It is with great sadness that I have to tell you of the death of Master Darbo, the old headmaster of Sambel School and the person responsible for helping to develop the school to the standard it is today.

Master Darbo had just been posted back to Sambel school after his sabbatical when he was diagnosed with cancer of the liver.

He was buried July 13th in Bansang and a large group of mourners from our villages attended the funeral.

We are having a collection in memory of Master which will go towards supporting his family and children. Any cheques should be made to Stella's School Scheme with 'for Master Darbo' on the reverse and we shall ensure that his family receives it as soon as possible. We are working on the idea of a trust fund to ensure that his children have funding for their education and if anyone has any ideas as to the best way to do this, please contact Heather Armstrong.

Master Darbo was a good friend to Stella and David and supported all the projects that we work with, giving up his summer holidays to work with the visiting students. He was also an enthusiastic sportsman and he will be deeply missed in our area.

After the success of our first dog walk earlier in the year, we are hoping to hold a nation-wide Halloween dog walk on the 31st October, 2010.

We can provide you with posters and advice and suggestions sheet if you would like to organise a walk in your area. Every little bit of money helps us so much and this is a fun way for families to enjoy their dogs and help charity. If any of you can help organise a walk, please would you contact Heather Armstrong. We would really appreciate your help.

Unfortunately the volunteer who was due to go out and help Max with all the administration is no longer able to go. If you know of anyone who would like to go for a year, we would love to hear from them. The job is very varied and involves working with the staff, the many visitors we have and the animals, it also involves working with the school and helping out with the admin of the human clinic when necessary. As well as having good knowledge of equines, we also need someone who loves dogs (we have 8).

Please contact Heather Armstrong if you are interested. Accommodation and board are provided plus "pocket money".

We recently discovered a really fun and relatively easy to organise way to fundraise.

Our charity dog walk started at the village hall and returned to the village hall for tea and cakes one hour and fifteen minutes later. We are very lucky that we have beautiful countryside around us and the dogs could go off lead for most of the walk without encountering roads or livestock.

The walkers returned to the village hall for a lovely tea and fresh baked cakes. We also held a raffle and a cake sale. I think everyone enjoyed it and felt it was good value and amazingly, we even received donations from the people who couldn't attend!

Each dog also received a gift courtesy of Darlings natural dog foods, who also very kindly provided a marvellous raffle prize of a voucher for a hamper of lovely fresh and natural dog food. We are very grateful to them for their support and I was made to feel like the pied piper of Hamlyn as I walked around distributing goodies to the dogs, so I know they appreciated it. Many thanks to Darlings and to Carol Whitcombe who came with a stall of delicious dog treats and toys.

I wondered if we could perhaps hold a national dog walk with people all over the country holding one on the same day. Perhaps at Halloween, holding it earlier in the days and returning for hot soup and crusty bread? If anyone might be interested in this please let Heather know.

THANKS to all who took part in the walk for their support and their generosity, we managed to raise a total of £650.

If there are any dog trainers out there, who use positive reinforcement methods, who would like to volunteer their expertise to help the GHDT with dog training, raising awareness of what dogs are capable of and thereby promoting the welfare of dogs, we would love to hear from you. We can provide you with board and lodging for a few weeks in The Gambia.

December 2009 - Our valiant volunteers built the most beautiful playground at the school in memory of our late Imaam and Stella Marsden. Alphajio and Stella were both anxious to develop our village school into one of the best in The Gambia and between us all we shall make sure that their hopes and plans for the school are fulfilled.

The adventure playground is one that any school anywhere in the world would be proud of and the children loved it.

Thanks to everyone who took part, whether it was in the planning, preparation or the building of it.

We will be arranging a shipment out to the Gambia soon, and will also be organising a trip out there with various equine experts in December. There are some really bad cases of disease and injury at the moment and treatment of such cases is expensive for us, so we are hoping to ship donated first aid supplies and also take as much as we can in December too. So with this in mind, I was wondering if anyone can help with donating any equine first aid supplies. In particular, we are in desperate need of:

If you have any supplies that you can spare, we would be very grateful, even if its just one bandage, or a couple of dressings, it all helps!

Sally Barron
91 Old London Road
St Albans
Herts
AL1 1QD
Email: Sally Barron
Tel: 01727 765 384

For those animal lovers amongst you who visit The Gambia, I am pleased to tell you that there is now an additional charity which compliments the sterling work carried out by GambiCats - Animal Care Gambia was recently started by a group of resident ladies and it is already doing a good job with the many stray dogs in The Gambia.

One of the vets who returned from a recent visit to The Gambia has highlighted the following things that we desperately need. If you could please bring it to the attention of any vets/equine dentists/supply companies that you may know, who may be able to help, we would be extremely grateful. Obviously POM drugs would have to be given via our veterinary surgeons in UK

We’ve teamed up with Justgiving.com, the UK’s leading online fundraising website, so you can donate and raise funds for the GHDT online.

Using Justgiving saves us costs and reduces our admin burden, so going online is by far the most efficient way of supporting us. It’s easy to make a single or monthly donation with a credit or debit card online:

Justgiving reclaims Gift Aid automatically and pays your donation directly to us at the end of every week, and the site is secure.

Justgiving also makes it easy to raise money: you can create an online fundraising page in minutes to collect donations for any sponsored event or appeal.

Fundraising pages are just like paper sponsorship forms, except they’re online. Simply personalise your page with a photo and message and email the web address to all your contacts. Friends, family, work colleagues and anyone else, from anywhere in the world, can then make a donation using your page.

You can create a fundraising page for absolutely anything. You could get sponsored to run, swim, cycle, get fit, grow a moustache or have your head shaved. The only limit is your imagination.

If you have any questions, or need any help, you can contact the Justgiving helpdesk on 0845 021 2110 or email Monday to Friday from 9am to 6pm.

*The Gambia Horse and Donkey Trust is not responsible for the content of external websites

Agility	Dog Grooming Displays
Micro Chipping	Bouncy Castle
BBQ and Refreshments	Homemade Cakes
Raffle	Trade Stands
Fun Classes for Everyone - Prizes to 3rd place, rosettes to 6th place, Trophy to best dog overall