During each holiday, we take a voluntary collection for a charity or other worthy cause chosen by participants on the holiday. One of this year's selected causes was Send a Cow. The letter we received following our donation is reproduced below, along with a photograph of one of Send a Cow's projects, and our donation certificate.


Thank you very much for your donation of £215.00, sent on behalf of Oakley Holiday Parties to Send a Cow. Your support will enable us to reach out to even more poor farmers, helping them to transform their lives through gifts of livestock and training. You chose to donate a pig, 20 chickens, 100 fruit tree saplings, a beehive, the tools and materials to make a pond, vegetable seeds and several days of training. I have enclosed a photograph of one of our projects in Africa and a certificate to say thank you to everyone who has contributed (both reproduced below).

Send a Cow continues to work with some of Africa's poorest farmers who have been affected by conflict, poverty and HIV/AIDS. In particular we work with women, disabled people, and child headed families. Many of these families, despite their own poverty, have often taken on the responsibility for caring for their orphaned relatives. For example we are currently working in Rakai in Southern Uganda where the world's first cases of AIDS were identified. As a result thousands of young families have lost their parents, and the oldest child has to take on the parent's role. We cannot lessen the pain of losing parents, but our gifts provide much needed economic security and the hope of a better future.

One such farmer to benefit is Olive Nabaale who is 14 and "mother" to her two younger brothers and younger sister. Her mother died of AIDS in 2000 and she nursed her father until he died last year. The children rely for a living on 2.5 acres of dry and infertile land. But in May 2002, Olive received a cow from Send a Cow. They now have milk to drink so their health has improved, and to sell, so they can afford home necessities such as matches and paraffin. Thanks to its manure, they can now make use of all of their land and olive was able to sell the cow's male calf, enabling them to buy clothes and replace the rags they had been reduced to wearing.

Thank you once again for your most generous support; it is very much appreciated.

Yours sincerely
Ashley Gelderblom
Donor Services Manager