The Photos of Fixed Roof

Here are some photos of the roof that has been fixed at the Yue Miao Institute for the Handicapped that to donations that have been received. There was some heavy rain several days ago in Shanghai and the new roof was great; there was not any leakage into the bedrooms! The children can now can have a great sleep when it rains.

Besides fixing the roof, a storage room was also built on the roof to hold some cleaning stuff. Now the roof is quite tidy and clean!

We're making progress in Shanghai!

Thanks to the generous donations thus far, we have been able to fix the roof and cover the expense of adding a new room!

Up next is building a music room and getting basic outside and inside painting completed before the end of May.

We already have plans to purchase bedding for all of the residents and take them on an excursion to the local aquarium -- which will be a special treat!

I will post photos of the work completed so far as soon as I get them!

We're going back to Vuyani

In June of this year the Tamar Cape Town office will be heading back to Vuyani Primary school in Guguletu as part of our annual CSR project.

As you are aware last year Tamar raised £21 000 and built a grade R classroom block for Vuyani. The project was a huge success and this year we’ve decided to return to Vuyani and help them out further.

Having planted trees around ‘our classroom’ in Sept of last year, our goal this year is to pave the sandy area around the classroom and install security gates. It’s a project that we are all very excited about.

We've been very fortunate to get Fantastic Racing on board again as our lead sponsor for our fundraising raffle. The prize is a once-in-a- lifetime opportunity to experience driving what was an original F1 motor car.

Partying for pounds (The GBP sort!)

We had our TLC Party at Studio Valbonne on Tuesday night. The general consensus was that a great time as had by all and, most importantly, quite a lot was raised to help out Yue Miao! Thanks to the generosity of those supporting the evening,  we made £3139 bringing us even closer to our goal of £12,000.

Congratulations to everyone who won raffle prizes and won the items they bid for on the auction.

We'd like to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who contributed to making the night so successful, especially the following individuals: Matthew Caddick from Chiswick Auction House for getting everyone to dig deep, James Mullinger for being a fantastic MC, Gary Colman and Joe Rowntree for entertaining us and Bogdan Szychowski for getting everyone dancing. A big thanks also to the following companies: Netimperative and Click Tonight for promoting the event, Studio Valbonne for providing the perfect venue, Weldon, Williams & Lick for printing the tickets, Barley Mow Repro for printing the programmes and A4 Sterling Leisure Hire for the Roulette and Blackjack. And thanks to everyone who donated such valuable items for the auction.

There are still some items available for auction on eBay, in particular a dress worn by Melissa George, designer bags and more. So please check out our eBay page.

So what next? Well we are well on track to hitting our fund raising target so the work to the Yue Miao Institution can commence in June. A team of Tamar staff will be going to Shanghai (travel costs sponsored by Tamar.com) to spend a week with the residents making major improvements to their living conditions

We will keep you informed on how the project progresses via email and don't forget to check out our the TLC website

Everyone at Tamar and the Yue Miao Institution is extremely grateful for thesupport - without others support our project wouldn't be possible.

TLC Fundraising Charity Party

Tomorrow on 15 April 2008, TLC will be hosting a party at Studio Valbonne. This evening has two purposes (1) to celebrate that launch of the Tamar Lifeline Charity which received it’s registration from the Charity Commission last month and (2) to raise funds for this year’s primary project – the Yue Miao Institute for the Handicapped.

If you have not got your ticket yet there is still time! You can either email party@tamarlifelinecharity.org or buy your tickets online at http://myworld.ebay.co.uk/charity_tlc

It will be a GREAT night with some gambling, fab comedy, raffle, auctions and dancing.

Hope to see you there!!!

TLC website is live!

The official website for the Tamar Lifeline Charity is now live at:
http://www.tamarlifelinecharity.org

Visit the TLC website to learn more about this year's project, our upcoming fundraising events and anything else you might like to know about the charity's activities.

School starts for the first Tamar Bursary holder

Simo Simo (holder of the first Tamar bursay) started school last week at St Cyprians. Nicky and I were invited to go along to the new parents evening. Unfortunately we didn’t get to see Simo but we met up with her parents Muvuyo and Sindiswa. Muvuyo says that Simo is loving St Cyprians and has already chosen tennis and swimming as her sports for this term and she is very excited about a camping trip planned for next month.

Tamar's Charity

Along with the work and support of our ongoing relationship with the Vuyani School, Tamar has been working on creating a formal charity to support the work and fundraising that we are doing.

The entire company brainstormed and then voted for a name for the  charity and the winning name was "Tamar Lifeline Charity"  -- TLC for short.

All of the paperwork has been submitted, so we are now waiting for confirmation and the registration number to make it all official.

There is a new website being developed and a tag line to summarise the purpose of the charity. It is all very exciting to see it coming together.

We are also making great progress with selecting a project for this year. I can tell you now that it will be in Shanghai, to show support for the community near our new office.

Check back here soon for the announcement of our 2008 project!

Fab Stuff!

A HUGE Thank You to Waterstones and especially Peter Trembath and Sue Graveling (Sarah's mum) at the Maidstone Branch for sending us loads of fantastic stationery to send out to the school.

The children will be completely thrilled and it's especially nice now as gifts such as these allow us to keep our relationship with the school.

We have a shipment going out in early February so we look forward to taking some pics at the school when everything is delivered.

Thanks again Waterstones!

Our classroom gets a facelift

 

We took advantage of the long summer school holidays to give 'our classroom' some running maintenance in preparation for the 2008 school year.

Little grubby fingers had marked the white walls of the classroom in the last 6 months so we painted the walls in a rich 'Vuyani' green.

The cement floors, which where cold in the winter have been covered in vinyl tiles and the toilet area was cleaned and painted.