Pageant news 12 August 2010

During the past twelve months, since the last container was sent to The Gambia, we have been packing up parcels of clothes, bedding, school uniform, toys, football kit, science equipment, books etc to act as infilling for the next container – to date we have packed an astounding 547 parcels at Ian & Pippa’s house, plus a further 80 at Ann & Brian’s house.

Today we started on the main contents – classroom furniture. Tina, Ann, Brian, Ian and Pippa were joined by a couple of professionals, Cliff & Laura of ‘Move It’ to collect, label and move 122 classroom tables and 431 chairs from Southwater Junior School to the barn from which the container will eventually be loaded at the end of this month. It was quite a daunting task as can be seen in the photographs – particularly as the furniture had been stored out in the playground of the school since the end of term and had to be dried before labelling and loading.
 

tables and chairs from Southwater Junior School ready for loading
a modern sculpture? - the chairs in the van	the tables are next

planning the next bit	last tables are in	Laura & Cliff

Having loaded all the furniture onto the ‘Move It’ removal van we then had to unload it all again, onto a large curtained trailer at the barn. Now we have to get the rest of the donated furniture together and clean and label some that has been down in the barn for a few months. Our grateful thanks to Southwater Junior School for their wonderful donation of furniture and to Cliff & Laura for their assistance and ‘Charity rate’ for the job.

A team of Pageant volunteer packers assembled bright and early at the barn on Friday 27 August. Sadly it was raining for the first part of the morning, so the chairs and tables etc were not in their normal massed ranks of lines before loading started. The 20 foot container arrived and the team started loading it with furniture from several local schools, including that recently brought from Southwater Junior School. In all, we were attempting to load 192 classroom tables; 583 chairs; 6 large cupboards with trays as drawers; 16 large corner desks with extensions and 4 pedestal sets of drawers (from Friends Provident in Dorking); and 5 stools.

In addition there were more than 700 parcels of books, science materials, sewing machines and fabrics, sheets & pillowcases for Health Centres, school uniform and other 'squidgy' things like sports kit. These parcels had been donated, sorted, packed and stored at Old School during the past year and had then been amassed in the room where we hold the Pageant AGM for collection before loading.

The weather relented just as the container arrived, so the great majority of the items were loaded dry, even though the team members themselves were rather muddy! In the end we did not manage to load it all, so we will be sending the 103 tables and 8 chairs, that we could not cram into our container, out in a mixed container loaded by the shipper, possibly on the same ship.

A big thank-you to all the volunteers who gave up a day of their time to pack this container. In the photo above - Top row: Momodou, Ian H, Craig and Rhys; Lower lot: Mark, Dave, Mo, John, Tina, Ann, Brian, Sandra, Frances, Ian G, Sarah, Chris, Helen, Andrew, Demelza and Kathy. Also: Robin, Jo, Emma and Maddie who had to leave before the team photo was taken, and Pippa who took it.

Our very grateful thanks also go to the Gilchrist Educational Trust, who donated £2,000 to Pageant for the express purpose of sending this container. We could not have paid for this from our general funds this year and we can now take this opportunity to say publicly how very much we appreciate the Trust's generosity. The furniture and other items sent on this container will benefit 12 schools directly from Pageant and some will go to other schools via the Department of Basic and Secondary Education..