On Friday 22nd August 2014, the latest consignment of donated materials was loaded onto pallets, to be sent to schools and associated village communities in The Gambia.

Parcels brought down from loft, being sorted and labelled with destination

This was the culmination of a marathon packing exercise and included a donation of classroom furniture from Green Lane Primary and Nursery School in Worcester Park in Surrey and 40 excellent 'adult' chairs from St Mark's Church in Horsham.

Parcels all sorted, labelled and boxed or bagged ready for loading

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Other major items were 49 microscopes, donated by Christ's Hospital and Ardingly College, which will be used in Pageant workshops for Gambian Science teachers in a number of schools. In addition to these there were 630 packages of all shapes and sizes that had been collected and wrapped during the preceding year and stored in the loft at Old School.

Every package and item of furniture was then labelled with the name of the recipient - this process alone had taken five of us the best part of two days to accomplish! The packages were pushed into the spaces between furniture legs etc and in all approximately 15 cubic metres of goodies were packed onto nine pallets.

Building up the pallets, furniture first, then spaces filled with 'squishies'

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Pallets fully loaded, wrapped and labelled – then lifted into lorry for transporting to shippers

Many thanks to the great Pageant team of 14 who turned out on the day for the loading and also to Christ's Hospital and PD Kitchens of Southwater for the loan of their tail-lift lorries and drivers, who took the pallets to the shipping agent in Crawley.

Pageant team for the loading, photo taken by Pippa
Anthony, Katy, Ben, Ian, Christine, Andrew G (inset), Brian, Frances, Andrew W, Tina, Ann, Helen, Michal

The consignment should arrive in Banjul in late September, where Wandifa, Yankuba and Abdoulie will no doubt do their normal excellent job of unloading and distribution.