News October - December 2019

5 December 2019 - Pageant team in The Gambia Pippa and Andy have been in The Gambia for the regular November visit. Andy organised the construction and installation of a large number of solar powered "homework lights" for Gambian children. Pippa kept us all up to date with their news, by sending txt and photos to Dave for posting on the Pageant News blog. All posts have been copied to our page of collected posts on the Pageant website, so you can see them all in one place.

30 October 2019 - Christmas Shopping with EasyFundraising Christmas is starting to creep up on us, and more and more of us are doing our shopping online. For some time now, Pageant has been part of the EasyFundraising scheme, where over 4,000 online retailers donate to Pageant a small percentage of the purchase price paid by our supporters - and all without costing an extra penny! We currently have 17 supporters who have raised nearly £300.

EasyFundraising is now offering a £5 bonus donation to Pageant when a new supporter reaches £5 with their shopping. Sign up now and help raise even more for Pageant. Please use the link on our EasyFundraising information page so that we get our bonus donations.

12 October 2019 - Shop at Amazon & Donate to Pageant Amazon has now launched Smile. If you shop at Amazon, you can register and select Pageant as your chosen charity, and we will get 0.5% of the purchase price of eligible products that you buy. For details of how to sign up, please see our Amazon Smile information page. Remember that you can still raise money for Pageant at around 4,000 other retailers using EasyFundraising. See details on our EasyFundraising information page.

News July - September 2019

9 September 2019 - New School Year - Why not sponsor a Gambian child? September marks the start of the new school year both in the UK and in The Gambia. Children and young people in The Gambia will be moving up a grade and many will be changing schools. So this is a perfect time to start sponsoring one of our students who need help with school fees and other costs. For further information about our scheme, have a look at our Sponsorship Information Page, and also at our Sponsorship Enquiry Page to see details of the students who need you help to continue their education.

15 August 2019 - Packing a container for The Gambia - Another container load is on its way to The Gambia. It was packed with chairs, tables, PE equipment, books and other useful stuff on Saturday 10 August. All these items were donated by two Crawley schools - Hilltop Primary School and The Oaks Primary School. Our special thanks to Moova, who provided their services free to move things donated by Hilltop to The Oaks where the container was packed. Read more and see the photos.

News April - June 2019

4 June 2019 - Microscopy Workshops Upcountry - Pageant runs annual Practical Science and Microscopy Workshops in February in conjunction with Gambia College. Our Gambian agents Wandifa, Yankuba and Abdoulie, provide invaluable help at these workshops, and have built up considerable expertise, particularly in the use of microscopes. They are now running additional microscopy workshops at schools which have received donated microscopes. The schools are delighted to get equipment and teaching materials, but these would be useless without this training. In May 2019 our guys held workshops at four upcountry schools in or close to Kafuta. See photos from these workshops.

18 May 2019 - The Pageant Power Hut - Many villages in The Gambia have no mains electricity, so it is very difficult for families to provide lighting and recharge mobile phones. The cost of the solar panels and associated equipment is beyond the means of most people. Pageant member Andrew Williams designed the Pageant Power Hut as an integrated system, providing and charging portable lights enabling village children to do their homework after dark as well as charging mobile devices. Read Andrew's account of setting up our first Power Hut.

10 May 2019 - Change of Donation Service Pageant's online donation service has been provided by BT MyDonate for several years. They were then the best choice as they did not charge any commision on donations - just the card handling fee. BT have now decided to close MyDonate, and it will cease operating on 30 June 2019.

We are please to announce that we have chosen a new service provided by the Wonderful Organisation. They make no charge of any sort, so we get every penny of your donation. All their expenses, including card fees, are covered by their corporate sponsors. We will get every penny of every donation, and they also handle Gift Aid for donors who are UK taxpayers, meaning that we get an extra without costing you an extra penny. From today, all donation buttons and other links have been switched from MyDonate to the Wonderful Organisation. Please let us know if you have any problems using our new service.

11 April 2019 - Google Site Search Available For many years we have had a Simple Search facility on our website. Though this is fast and convenient to use, it is ... simple. We have now added the power of a Google Custom Search with extra search options such as searching for specified phrases or searching for images - just like a Google web search, but targeted on the Pageant website. Both searches are available from nearly all web pages by clicking the search links on the main menu at the top of each pages. Learn more by looking at our search help page.

News January - March 2019

21 March 2019 - New GEPADG website The Gunjur Environmental Protection and Development Group (GEPADG) operates in the Atlantic coastal area in the southern part of The Gambia. They are motivated by their desire to protect and enhance their natural environment, working to achieve long-term, sustainable solutions to poverty by reversing the destruction of forests, mangroves and coastal ecosystems. They now have a new website where you can keep up to date with all their news.

21 February 2019 - Annual General Meeting Pageant's AGM will go ahead on Sunday 24 February at 2:30pm as planned. Pippa is still in hospital recovering from her accident in The Gambia, so Andrew Groves will be chairing the meeting.

16 February 2019 - Website Report 2018 Our short annual report covering this website is now available online in PDF format. If you would like to read it, click this link to download it. IF you have any comments or questions about our website, please get in touch by email or by using our feedback form, using the links on our contact page.

6 February 2019 - Worldclass and Yundum LBS Bishops Waltham Junior School Worldclass have established a link with Yundum Barracks LBS. They have letter exchanges between 64 children at Yundum and 64 at Bishops Waltham. They are now sponsoring two children at Yundum Barracks LBS and two at the Nursery School. Read the full story

2 February 2019 - Gambia Visit - Latest News The Pageant team are in The Gambia and Andrew is posting uodates on the Pageant News Blog. Unfortunately Pippa has had an accident, and is in hospital with broken bones. Despite this, the team are determined to go ahead with the microscopy and chemistry workshops. Please keep checking the blog for the latest on Pippa. As usual, all the blog posts are being copied to our Summary Page.

24 January 2019 - Improved News Archives We have kept lots of old pages and news items as a record of Pageant's past work since 2003. As a result our news archive page has grown very large. Even with today's fast internet, this could take a while to download, when there might be just one item of interest. Also the drop down menu, which made it easier to find news items for a particular date range, was becoming longer than screen height on many mobile devices. So - the archive has now been split into 8 smaller pages. Also the 'find-by-date' feature is now on its own page so it can be scrolled. The new system works seamlessly with all the news and archive pages and on all screen sizes. It should make access from mobiles much easier.

19 January 2019 - Pageant's February visit to The Gambia A Pageant team will soon be in The Gambia again during February. Pippa, Kathy and Andrew will be joined by Bob Skipper for the regular Workshops for Teachers. Carole and Alan will also be there for part of the visit. As well as the workshops there will be visits to schools, children and village communities. Andrew will be keeping us up to date with regular posts on the Pageant News blog. Once again I will copy these to our website on a page of collected posts.

News October - December 2018

29 November 2018 - Pageant team have been in The Gambia Pippa, Carole, Regina and David have been in The Gambia for the regular November visit. Pippa kept us all up to date with their news with regular posts on the Pageant News blog. These posts have been copied to our page of collected posts on the Pageant website, so you can see them all in one place.

News July - September 2018

12 September 2018 - New Term - New Sponsorship Opportunities The new school term is starting in The Gambia, and also the new school year. All our children and young people who are looking for sponsorship will be moving up a grade and many will be changing schools. Now is the ideal time to start sponsoring one of these students. For further information about our scheme, have a look at our Sponsorship Information Page, and also at our Sponsorship Enquiry Page to see details of the students who need you help to continue their education.

7 August 2018 - Monitoring web page changes If you would like alerts when any of our pages gets changed, we can recommend some services which allow you to set this up. [see more details on this page]

10 July 2018 - Summer Party for Pageant members This year's Summer Party was held on Sunday, 8 July at Old School, Southwater. The event was well attended, with more than forty members, family and friends. All enjoyed an al-fresco lunch of both Gambian and British dishes. [Read Pippa's report]

News April - June 2018

11 June 2018 - MBE for Pageant Fundraiser - Carol Grace has been awarded an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) "for services to the NHS and voluntary service to Education in The Gambia." More on her web page

11 June 2018 - Problems with our Forms - During a recent upgrade to the servers which host the Pageant website, a piece software which handles our on-line forms was removed. This meant that none of the forms on our pages were working for maybe several weeks, without us being aware of it. The server technical people have now fixed this, and with a small modification to our forms, all is now working again. Apologies to anyone who tried to use a form and it didn't work.

25 May 2018 - GDPR and Your Information - By now everyone must have heard about the new law which came into force today. The General Data Protection Regulation replaces the Data Protection Act 1998. GDPR governs how we collect your personal information, how we store it and how we use it. Pageant is confident that the ways in which we handle your information already comply with GDPR. We collect only the information we need for specified purposes, store it securely and only use it for lawfully permitted purposes. We will not pass on any information to third parties unless you tell us we can. GDPR also introduces rights which you have over your information, such as getting a copy, correcting any errors and having it completely erased We have updated our Privacy Policy to make it completely clear to everyone how Pageant handles your personal information.

News January - March 2018

22 March 2018 - Give to Gambia - Report - Nick Taylor has been in The Soma area of The Gambia, helping schools and communities with projects funded from his fundraising activities. Now read this report which he has written about these projects.

9 March 2018 - Donation of Furniture - You may remember that last summer Pageant loaded a container with donated furniture from the old Leatherhead Food Research Association building - see this news item about packing the container, and then this description of the unpacking in The Gambia. This news has now made it into the local press, and you can read the article from this link.

2 February 2018 - February Gambia Visit - Once again a Pageant team, consisting of Pippa, Kathy and Andrew, are in The Gambia for the regular February visit. Once again Andrew is battling with an unreliable internet to post news on the Pageant News Blog. We are copying posts all his posts to this dedicated page on our website, so you can see everything in one place. Keep checking this page for news as it comes in.

11 January 2018 - Pageant Website Report - This year the Pageant AGM will be delayed until Sunday 4th March. However, the 2017 website report is already on-line, so you can read it in advance and be ready with your questions.

▲▲top of page▲▲

▼▼ 2016-17 ▼▼