2 July 2009 - 'Summer Get-together' for members, Sunday, 12 July - Pippa and Ian will be hosting their annual 'Open House' day for Pageant Members on 12 July 2009, between 11am and 4pm. (read more on the Members Page)

1 July 2009 - Elena raises €200 for Pageant - After a visit to a school in The Gambia, Elena Tassi has raised €200 to say thank-you for their hospitality. Pageant would like to use this to help the school - but first we need identify which school it was! (more details and pictures)

9 June 2009 - Microsoft moves the goalposts - Pageant's webmaster complains about Internet Explorer 8.0 and how it doesn't display Pageant's web pages properly. (read more)

24 May 2009 - Nigel Walsh has completed the 2009 Comrades Marathon in South Africa, running the 89.17km between Pietermaritzburg and Durban in a time of 11 hours, 35 minutes and 42 seconds. See his webpage for more details.

30 April 2009 - Gambia Trip - The final instalments have now been posted on the Pageant News Blog, and have been added to our news page.

29 April 2009 - Nigel Walsh runs the 2009 Comrades Marathon - On 24 May 2009, Nigel Walsh will tackle the 56-mile Comrades Ultra-Marathon in South Africa for the tenth time. It is the biggest sporting event on the South African calendar, attracting fields of between 10,000 and 15,000 runners to a tough, steeply undulating route between Pietermaritzburg and Durban. He will be raising funds for Pageant's projects in The Gambia, so please sponsor him if you can. (more details)

28 April 2009 - Bumper Bundle for Jarreng - Christmas 2008 produced the largest ever amount donated for mosquito nets through the Pageant Ethical Gift Token scheme. We received enough money to buy 50 family sized nets, which we took to Jarreng for distribution. (more details)

28 April 2009 - Artemisia Project update - A herbal tea made from the leaves of Artemisia annua variety Anamed is an effective ant-malarial treatment. Pageant has so far financed the Gambian National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) to grow and provide Artemisia annua seedlings to two groups of five villages, oversee their continued cultivation and advise on harvesting and preparation of the tea. See update on our Artemisia Project page. If you would like to help raise £2500 to fund the next group of five villages, please send a cheque or you can donate online.

26 April 2009 - The Big Read - Worldwide, there are 774 million illiterate adults, 75 million children out of primary school and 226 million children not in secondary school. Nearly all governments have promised ‘Education for All’ by 2015. The Big Read is taking place across the world, with distribution of a free book of short stories by leading figures, Nobel Peace Prize winners and award winning authors. The Gambia's highlight event will take place at Gambia College, (the national teacher training centre). Stories and testimonies from Gambia’s celebrities and learners are being presented against a backdrop of songs on the theme of adult literacy that have been written by trainee teachers. There are also events taking place in literacy centres across the country. See more on this Gambia Observer news item.

23 April 2009 - Gambia Trip - from the Blog - Pippa, Tina, Frances and Claire have just returned from a two week trip to The Gambia. Frances posted news items on our News Blog during the trip, and both Sainey and Alhassan Darboe added their descriptions of the 'up-river' trip to Jarreng. We are collecting all the posts and pictures together on this news page. and will add to it as more posts appear.

Recent News

28 March 2009 - Updates to Schools Index - We have added to new schools to our Schools Index, and also implemented an alphabetic menu system for finding particular schools. (See our Schools Index)

18 March 2009 - Alhassan Darboe wins essay prize - One the Pageant Blog team in The Gambia, Alhassan Darboe, has won first prize in a 'Black History Month' essay competition organised by the US Embassy in Banjul. He received a number of prizes, including $250 in cash. (more details)

13 March 2009 - djb donate more science equipment - Derek Walker, who runs djb microtech, has generously donated more sets of school science equipment. Pippa took these to several schools in The Gambia during her recent trip. (more details)

20 February 2009 - Abuko Visit - June & Brian visited Abuko Lower Basic School during their Gambian holiday (more details)

19 February 2009 - Gambia Visit - A party of Pageant members is currently visiting The Gambia. Helen Groves has posted a number of reports on their visit on our Pageant News Blog. Keep checking for the latest updates.

5 February 2009 - Nursery Furniture arrives in The Gambia - Linda Murgatroyd tells us that the consignment of nursery furniture and other items has arrived and is being distributed. (details of packing)

1 February 2009 - £350 from Braintree church - Pageant would like to say a big thank-you to the members of Christ Church in Braintree, Essex. They have a tradition of not sending individual Christmas cards to each other, but all signing one large card. They then put the money that would otherwise be spent on cards and postage into a fund to help a chosen charity. This year they chose Pageant, and contributions were linked to items in the nativity story, and to Pageant's ethical gifts scheme: Joseph - Carpentry Tools and Training; Stars - Solar Lanterns.

26 January 2009 - Pageant AGM The seventh Pageant AGM took place on Sunday 25 January 2009. It was attended by 49 members. See this news item for more details. Next year's AGM has been provisionally set for Sunday 24 January 2010.

14 January 2009 - Nursery School Furniture for Gambian Schools - Furniture donated by Shelley Primary School and Littlehaven Infant School is being sent to nursery schools at Campama and Gunjur. (more details)

2 January 2009 - Pageant Annual General Meeting - will be held on Sunday 25 January 2009 at 2.30pm at Old School, Southwater, Horsham, West Sussex RH13 9DT. All members should have received an email invitation.

2 January 2009 - Plymouth Dakar Challenge - For the first time in several years, there are no teams in the challenge raising funds for Pageant. However, we thought you might like news of this year's event. The challenge is now split between four destinations, two of them new.

• The Silk Road Challenge group of eight cars left Calais on 9 October 2008, bound for Baku in Azerbaijan.

• The Morocco off-road group of twelve teams left the UK on 28 December, following the Plymouth-Banjul route as far as Morocco, then touring around a bit before returning to the UK with their vehicles.

• Four groups of vehicles are in the Timbuktu Challenge, leaving the UK from 20 December 2008 to 11 January 2009, using the same route as the Banjul groups into Mauritania, before striking inland and into Mali.

• There are three groups in the Banjul Challenge. Group 7 left on 20 December, and are now just about to tackle the Sahara desert. Group 8 left on 26 December, and are currently in Morocco.  Group 9 are due to leave on 11 January.

For further information, have a look at the Plymouth Dakar website, though it is a bit short on up-to-date news.

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