Ride for Life 2006: All Threads Merged

[essjay]

RIDE FOR LIFE 2006

This year the run is from John o Groats to Lands End and it takes place on the 20th & 21st of May. We hope to beat the amount raised last year (£5000) all riders are asked to raise money by either sponsorship or donation. All Reps will be sent info & copies of the forms

Sponsorship forms are available by clicking on the thread below or contacting Essjay at essjay1340@aol.com who will either send them as an attachment or snailmail (your choice)
Sponsor forms; http://www.harley-davidson-hangout.com/forum/showthread.php?t=43781
All other info on the RFL can be found at: http://www.harley-davidson-hangout.c...prune=-1&f=237

There will be a bit of a do at the finish (Sunday night) at Trevaylor Campsite at St Just, 4 miles from Lands End, it’s a friendly campsite with a bar & grub, also there are plenty of B&Bs in & around St Just for the not so hardy! all are welcome.

Please note all cheques to be made payable to “The GNHCT”

All Harley – Davidson riders are welcome to join in.

P.S. see you soon Jimmy's!!!!!!

[kendo]

For those of you who are either new to the forum or new to the club and do not know what the ride for life is about here is a copy of a letter from the organiser, Annette, cut & pasted from last year;

THE GLOBAL NATURAL HEALTHCARE TRUST
“Holistic Treatment for HIV/AIDS”
United Kingdom Registered charity Number 1107629
South African Registered (Section 21) Number 2003/02937/08

Dear Harley Davidson Riders of Great Britain,

“RIDE FOR LIFE” 21st 22nd May 2005

Firstly I would like to thank you for the time & trouble you have all gone to in various parts of Great Britain, to help raise HIV/AIDS awareness & to offer help in raising much needed funds to keep our holistic pilot project going in South Africa.

This project as many of you are aware, was started to meet a real need on not only the largest settlement in South Africa, but also the largest settlement in Africa. Here hundreds of thousands of people reside in varying types of houses and in extremely impoverished circumstances. I had spent 10 years of my life in East Africa, Kenya, and it is during this time and in particular the last three years, that I was made aware of a new disease that would change the world. And it has! There are now over 50 million cases throughout the world of HIV/AIDS. And still NO CURE.
Here in the U.K. we must not act complacently, as we have some 60 thousand cases, but here in the U.K. it is a much easier task to deal with, for we have the National Health Service. Where I have been working in South Africa on the Orange Farm Settlement, which is about 30 minutes outside Johannesburg, there are only two doctors and sadly those doctors are part time. The Government Clinics are managed by over-worked nursing staff and sadly inadequate medical supplies.
What the GNHCT has brought to the settlement is HOPE & A NEW DIRECTION.
We started with just a small handful of patients, and now we have almost 7,000.
We started with just 7 HIV/AIDS orphans and we now have almost 4,000. We built a small Holistic Treatment Centre, and a small orphanage, we trained 10 Clinic Nurses and 15 Health Care Givers to work out on the settlement assisting patients by washing them, feeding them and ensuring that they took their medicines, be it ours or what had been offered at the government clinics. Our team work very hard, there are no thoughts of holidays or even days off.

All of the medicine we prescribe is Natural, Safe, and Organic Herbal Medicine.
The patients are seen each month and receive all the care and attention we can give them. They queue in the early morning light, until late at night. Those that are the weakest are seen first, the others who HAVE BEEN BEFORE and are gaining weight and feeling considerably better are allowed to collect their repeat prescriptions. All of the appointments and Herbal Medicine are given to the patients for FREE.
I travel out to South Africa each month at my own expense; to date we have not been able to obtain sponsorship. But we are trying. There are no admin costs with our charity, all Trustees both here in the U.K. and out in Africa give their time freely.
At present we have outgrown our existing Holistic Treatment Centre, and are trying to purchase a much larger building on the settlement, which will cost around £50,000 to purchase AND get in order. There is already a voluntary team in place from Rotary at Henley on Klip (South Africa) who has kindly offered to assist us with the work and help make this building our new Holistic Treatment Centre.

All monies received by the Global Natural Healthcare Trust go through Rotary International, our account in South Africa is managed by the Rotary Club of Henley on Klip, This account requires three signatories, two from Rotary and one from myself as founder. All of our accounts here in the U.K. are managed by Lang-Bennets of Truro, Cornwall, and in South Africa by D.F. Malan & Co, Johannesburg.

All that remains is to wish you success in obtaining sponsorship for your ride, if you have companies or private business’s sponsoring you, please remember to tell them that we are a registered charity and that they will receive a receipt from us and claim this donation against their business.
Your safety is of the utmost importance to all of us here at GNHCT and that of your loved ones. Please ride well and remember it is not a race, but a time in your life when you help others to fight for theirs.
Sincerely
Annette Montague-Thomas, The founder of the Global Health Care Trust.


Here is a photo of Annette with one of her patients;





You can find out more about last years ride to see how it went and to see photos etc.....just go into virtual rally and type ride for life into the search bit and loads of stuff will come up.

We hope you can take part and raise as much as you can as this charity needs our money.

Cheers,

Kendo

[kendo]

Here is a copy of the latest update letter from Annette;

Greetings Harley Riders,

And how good it is to be back in contact with you all and give you an update of the work that the GNHCT and Harley Davidson Riders Club of Great Britain and “Ride for Life” are carrying out at the HIV/AIDS project in South Africa.

Two of your riders; Trevor and Sylvia Moyle from the Kernow Harley Club, came over for one week in October last year and saw the project “hands on” for themselves and were very much part of the action. trevormoyle@tiscali.co.uk

Firstly the statistics:

We have 2,036 active clinical HIV/AIDS patients.

We had more, but some have died and some have gone onto the Antiretroviral medicines from the new Government Clinic on Orange Farm and some patients continue to take both, our support herbals for strengthening the bodily system and the ARV’s.

No one as of yet has a cure.

Many patients have died of starvation, not the virus. This is so sad.

We have at present 175 bedridden patients.

We care in conjunction with Social Services for over 4,000 HIV orphans in our area on the Orange Farm Settlement; we operate in what is know as Extension 2 on Orange Farm. These orphans are living in Foster Care Homes which we set up. Nothing grand, the foster homes are all large shacks.

On Orange Farm there are almost 12,000 orphans. Stats: from the Department of Health, South Africa.

I returned from South Africa two weeks ago, and met with the Minister of Affairs, a Mr Bogenni. One of our South African Trustees was present at that meeting, Mr Andrew Brooke-Smith. Andrew is a grower of vegetables and has a registered training course that takes the Africans through various stages of food production. Andrew represents the Organic Society and has recently returned from a trip of the International Fare which was held in Germany.

Also present at the meeting was GNHCT’s admin secretary Thebo and in all it was a very successful meeting, and then after the meeting the Minister sent three of his team out to see the new site we are trying to obtain.

We need more growing land for the medical herbs and food crops as all the vegetable gardens that we have started over the years are still not enough for the people. So we must grow big time.

The new plot we are after is about 40 acres, and has two buildings on which was an old colonial police station, and outside is a large double story building which was the old holding prison.

The buildings have been empty for about 7 years, so need quite a few repairs, a couple of windows and new toilet facilities in the main building. The already large kitchen can be converted into a dispensary and the other rooms of which there are about seven will be suitable for consulting and nurses rooms, along with a new blood testing room.

We need to purchase some various lab equipment, i.e. a microscope and a CD4 blood testing machine; although on the net I see that there is a new digital CD4 machine coming out. Let’s see what the costs are first. We need to blood test our own patients to enable us to monitor their progress as this enables us to change their prescriptions accordingly.

We have out sourced this service in the past, but the expense is just too much for our small charity.

Then the building outside we wish to convert into a baby and toddler centre and that we want to call “The Cuddle Centre”, and on the other side of the building we want to convert this into a small cottage hospital. Its time we had a full time Doctor on this project. Please God.

The Minister of Land Affairs has said it will take a while to sort out the paperwork for this new site, but he assures me he will help with funds to fence the property. Yipeeee.

We have already made up a list of basic requirements for the orphanage and the small hospital and I have approached Rotary International for financial support. If any of you have Rotary links or any other charities or organizations that might consider helping us, I urge you to speak on my/our behalf.

The project is now moving towards its sixth year since the conception and we have learnt a great deal, we have certainly have been ripped off a few times by people who are desperate, you have to make some allowances in these third world countries!

From here on the new centre should give us a real showcase to attract interest, we next then intend to obtain an import license to enable us to import our herbs from the U.K. The price we pay for medical herbs is three times that of U.K. And our herbal growing fields still can not cope with the magnitude of this project.

Last year we raised £16,000. This was our best year thanks to you all for raising almost £5,000.

The project needs £3,000 a month to keep it afloat and be assured we work hard at GNHCT to keep fundraising events going.

Yesterday I was at a young children’s school called St Francis of Falmouth, Cornwall. They had a pancake race a few weeks back and raised £100. How lovely is that?

I recently wrote the lyrics to a song called “Beautiful child of Africa” and a young, and I mean young, they are all 15 years old! Boy’s Band wrote the music which is going on sale at as many schools as possible at £3. If you have any schools that will take and try and sell 50 CDs let me know and we will send some to them. Two video shops are already selling them and one music shop. If you have businesses or work with a good few people, do consider having these to sell.

If any of you would like to come out to South Africa at the end of October of this year, that is when I need help as it is then we will be bringing all the orphans and I mean all! (this year we shall pay for coaches to bring them in) to party. Harley riders, Sylvia and Trevor were magnificent in blowing up the balloons and Sylvia served that much juice she had orange arms for days, which suited her well!!

Take care my darlings, ride safe and ride well. “Life is for living and Riding is for Life”

See you all at the “Ride for Life” on the 21st and 22nd May.

This year we start at the top of the country, and work our way down. Come on down guys let me have the pleasure of shaking your hands.

I will be at the start, and I will be at the finish.

God bless you all

Annette Montague-Thomas
The Founder
The Global Natural Healthcare Trust

Annette@gnhct.org

[kendo]

Boogiefool is at present sorting out the pin badges. ( cheers for that )

We chose most peoples favourite which was number 4 from those we posted on the old site. They should turn out pretty good.

We just need to sort out the final cost of a pin in order to recoup the costs and then give the rest to the charity.

Cheers,

Kendo

[boogiefool]

Think they're going to look ok.
Samples should be back by Wed next week and there'll be a different colour theme for each year.
They stand a chance of raising a good bit of extra revenue for the charity without being overly expensive.

Got them to put a good finish on the enamel in case it rains!

[Stuarty]

Who are charity cheques made payabe to? (I read it somewhere before but cant find it again )

[kendo]

Originally Posted by Stuarty

Who are charity cheques made payabe to? (I read it somewhere before but cant find it again )

GNHCT

[Harley Derek]

Hi Essjay & Kendo,
sorry guys but I won't be there this year I'm afraid.
As of today, I no longer have the FXR, it's sold!
The new project is not yet built and I probably won't even be in the country in May, looking like I'll be flying off on Monday 24th April for warmer climes.
Hope everything goes well for you, that it doesn't rain and that it's an even bigger success than last year!

[kendo]

Well that's a shame HD, but I'm sure you'll be thinking of us

Nice to hear the FXR has finally been sold so you can continue with the new project. Can't wait to see it.

Hope you have a great holiday and we'll see you soon,

Kendo





ps I need somewhere to stay on the Saturday night coming down from Aviemore so just leave your keys under the mat ;)

[boogiefool]

Originally Posted by kendo

Well that's a shame HD, but I'm sure you'll be thinking of us

Will he feck!
He'll still be busy learning how to put on sun tan lotion with one hand and call the waiter over with the other

Gonna miss ya D.