A tiny teddy bear taken around the world by sailor Dee Caffari led to an Alverstoke school becoming involved in a European project to raise awareness about problems facing the marine environment. Pupils at the Gosport junior school had asked Dee to take the bear with her on her first solo round-the-world trip and she received such a vast amount of publicity in sailing-mad France that the school was invited to join the AWARE project, Around the World, a Race for the environment. The youngsters linked up with pupils at two schools in France, along with one each in Poland and Spain to produce a charter to take care of the sea and a copy was given to each skipper taking part in the Vendee Globe race around the world that took place last November, one of the school’s governors Richard Baker Jones told club

Fareham’s Abbeyfield Society, the organisation that runs homes for independent and active older people, celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year. The society has two houses in the town’s East Street where older people who no longer want to live alone can find companionship. Although the homes have permanent staff they are run by an executive committee of volunteers and two of them, Gill Cairns and Roy Taylor, told members all about the friendly ‘family’ home atmosphere the staff strive to provide. “Each home has a housekeeper and they go that extra mile for the residents,” said Mrs Cairns. “There are a number of social activities such as cream teas, barbecues and gatherings at Christmas for those residents who don’t go to stay with family.” Residents cater for themselves at breakfast but “they all get together at lunch and at tea time,” said Mr Taylor. Each

THE unusual sounds of ukelele playing and singing voices rang out at the October speaker meeting and what a happy occasion it was. Janet Ayres, pictured on the right of the picture, is a natural voice practitioner who has been running a choir for six years. With her is club member Kathleen Durning, a singer in her choir. Janet explained how the Alzheimer’s Society began Singing for the Brain sessions initially to help carers but had since extended the idea to dementia sufferers, allowing them to socialise with others in a fun, stimulating and supportive group. After describing how the process worked – including exercises to help with breathing and even yawning to loosen the throat and warm up the voice – she had her audience singing. She said singing was connected with emotion and that as emotional memory was preserved it was a good

WHEN her husband died of pancreatic cancer in 2003 Maggie Blanks was so outraged at how little research was done into the disease that she decided she wanted to do something about it. Having discovered that survival rates for pancreatic cancer had barely improved in forty years she told club members that “there was a crying need for more research.” Only three per cent of sufferers survived for more than five years, she said. So she set up the Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund a year after the death of her husband Alan at the age of 56. Maggie, pictured above left with member Sue Baddeley,  found that the big organisations spent a tiny amount of money on pancreatic cancer research so she was determined to encourage more research that was targeted specifically at the disease. The charity was funding research into improving early diagnosis because

One of our ongoing projects is to support the Women’s Refuges at Gosport and Fareham and this year in the school holidays we arranged a day out for 15 women and children from at Manor Farm Country Park where visitors can see a working farm in action. There is an old church in the grounds, as well as a farmhouse and schoolroom all furnished as they were in the 1930s The farm animals proved very popular with the children , particularly the pigs and piglets! As well as handling some of the animals, feeding the ducks and hens, and taking part in a baking session in the old farmhouse kitchen, some of the children enjoyed rides on a Shetland pony. Others had their faces painted. Club members provided goodies for a picnic which gave everyone a chance to chat. It was a lovely day for