JS – General Care
Big thank you to Care team - tremendous commitment. General care team are at Cantemerle most
days for a variety of tasks. Extra people came in to help with Mambo lifts a big thank you particularly
men who had strength. HG family have stepped in to Mambo lifts when people haven’t turned up and
again thank you. The age group of the carers is very mixed from teenagers – 70, all get on very well.
We have had young people on school/university holidays and it is nice to see that they are giving up
their time to help us.
People that have helped maybe haven’t been involved in horses before but training and advice has
been given to develop these people. Care team are committed and never ask for compensation
(petrol etc.) HG & Judy give up a tremendous amount of time to care for ASHA horses, there are not
many equestrian centres that would give up this time and space.
Horse Calls have dwindled and we have had no rescues within the last 6 months. However, we do
receive lots of calls from non rescue case, eg. Couple rented a house in France to see if they wanted
to live here, as they had land they took on 4 donkeys, after a period of time they decided that France
wasn’t for them, and asked us to take the Donkeys. These are NOT rescue cases, we are not here to
take on other peoples responsibilities. However, we would put these Donkeys on our website to
hopefully try and find them a new home.
HG – Update on ASHA horses.
Last year has been very hard on care team, thank you Carina & Dave for commitment to Mambo, Pat
for care of Ginger and well done to all fosterers. HG passed around photos of Mambo and thanked
everyone for donations.
Ginger who has been with Pat Lee is now at Cantemerle for walking to try and build his muscle, he is
still very skinny despite eating lots! He is on medication for kidney problems.
Batman (stallion) fenced in very well, he has a lovely manner but we haven’t mixed him with other
boys, this is due to the lack of boys that we have available at Cantemerle. But he is next to boys.
Mentally he is beautiful and gentle. When he arrived he had worms and dental problems which have
no been sorted, but again he is very skinny. Next step is to mix him with boys prior to him being
available for adoption.
Ourigan – has been adopted by a Mother & Daughter who are knowledgeable with horses, they are
very happy with him and send us regular photos and updates.
Sportif – has been adopted in May 2010 and he pensions at Cantemerle, he and his new owner make
a perfect partnership.
Bonnie – her training has been put back slightly and she has been a little cheeky, she is traffic aware
and does get walked out.
Promise – 2 years ago HG visited America to help work in a rescue centre, Promise was found
walking the streets, and the training plan that the centre was introducing was not beneficial to
Promise. HG found out very quickly that she was blind in one eye, and that was why she wasn’t
responding to the hand signals given by the other instructors. HG started her under saddle, but
Promise doesn’t like softly softly and if you put a saddle on she wants to go! Within 3 days she was
leading other horses. In the year prior to HG returning to America nothing more was done with
Promise (this was one of the reasons that ASHA concentrates on rehabilitation and not just putting
horses out to grass.) The Instructors found Promise aggressive but this was mainly due to her blind
problem and the instructors not reading this correctly. HG saddled and rode Promise and an appeal
was put out to try and find her a home but nothing was found, so HG thought lets bring her to France!
An advert was put out and a fund raising effort and within a year, we/America had raised enough
funds to bring her to France. So far she hasn’t been ridden and training will commence shortly.
KK commented that ASHA would accept Promise once she was in France, over $10,000 was raised.
Due to law HG had to adopt Promise for 6 months after this time she will become an ASHA horse.
KG Events – Last Year
Last year approx €8000 was raised, and a big thank you Pat Lee, Christine Milligan, Charlotte Halsby,
Patricia Richardson, Ann Slater, Sue Ford, Vanessa Van Dyke, Petra & MVA and Carina – all who
have given up their own homes to hold an ASHA event. Ann Slater even learnt to ride to complete a
sponsored ride for ASHA. John Kearsey for being our quizmaster. SP & JS for organising and
standing all day at the Vide Grenier in Parranquet. KK & Gaye Galliver + owners of Moulin de la Ville
for organising evening under the stars. TooTalls & Peter Clarke for playing free of charge at our Music
Night. Big thanks also to the members of the Events Committee for all of their hard work.
We have to do two types of events one to raise awareness and one to raise funds.
Our Open Day & Western Night was perhaps a little disjointed, people have commented that it was a
good event and it’s a shame it wasn’t better attended – hardly any general public/tourist attended,
despite lots of effort being made to organise and advertise this event.
MVA – Publicity 2010
Last year we promised to be more active - and so we were. Our events were published in many
newspapers like the Depeche, Sud-Ouest, French News, The Advertiser. We also did a live interview
on Radio 4. In addition, Radio 4 came over to Cantemerle on our Open Day to do a live interview with
Helen. MVA & Sabine Thomas contacted a major French equine magazine and had an article
published.
We have produced a new brochure and sent it to every Mairie in our Canton and beyond. It was sent
to 45 communes with a letter explaining why and how.
We try to publish ASHA Newsletter 4 times a year on our Website, no winter newsletter was done due
to present commitments. If anyone is interested in helping to publish this – please note that this will be
posted out to members with no internet/email address.
KG Website 2010
JB resigned due to problems with her internet provider/service, KG agreed to step in.
In approx Spring of last year, it was hard for us to get the website updated quickly as we were going
through a 3rd party who was volunteering his services. So we investigated a site that could host our
website for €80 per year, from then on we had control of our site and its content. JB & KG worked
hard on this and so the new website was launched, although still a lot of criticism is heard that our
website is out of date. But it is not straight forward as who do you aim at:
Members (they normally expect things to be updated), Casual Visitors, People looking for help/advice
about equines in distress (they want to see what we are about, and this must be our priority), People
looking for an equine to adopt?
The answer is ALL, but Members need something different from the site than the other 3 groups.
They need changing content to give them a reason to keep coming back to the site. But any other
visitor to the site needs to immediately see what ASHA is about, not necessarily what is happening
day to day. So, the challenge for us now is to try to come up with a site which satisfies both of these
needs.
SP –Membership 2010
At present our members and supporter numbers are
40 members, 88 supporters, 2 Chesnut ‘Friends’
As at the AGM last year our members and supporters numbered 81, so we have managed an
increase this year of 49 new members and supporters. We are trying new methods by using the
Website to increase our supporters. Sponsoring a particular horse or raising sponsorship for food,
hay, dentist etc. These have to date been slow to show any real benefit to ASHA but of course we
must keep trying new methods and ideas to see what works for us. 96% renewed, 1 declined and
the others have moved away (no contact details)
LMC – Treasurer 2010
NOVEMBER 2009 - OCTOBER 2010
ASHA started the year with available funds of €1602.28.
Throughout the year our members and supporters held many events to raise more funds for the
horses and donkeys in our care. These events were very successful and raised a total of €7,820.61
profit.
Alongside the events, we have our membership and supporter fees and one-off donations totalling
€5,276.39, this includes a substantial donation of €2,000.00 from the Dordogne Ladies who chose
ASHA as their Charity for this year who we thank greatly. We have also generated €1,400.00 in
adoption fees.
As you would expect, the main expenses have been for medical care and food. The medical
expenses amounted to €4,080.13 and the feed expenses €4,166.45. These expenses could have
been more, but for the generosity of some people who gave their time and effort free of charge.
The general expenses came to a total of €3,015.57 this figure includes field equipment, tools,
insurance etc.
The figures for merchandising are distorted due to the recent purchase of new stock. Unfortunately
this year ASHA showed a loss of €269.08. However, we do still have the stock available to sell.
ASHA has ended its financial year looking much healthier than it began. As at ASHA’s year end date
31 October 2010, ASHA has available funds of €4,568.13.
MEMBERS OF THE GENERAL COMMITTEE FOR 2010
President - Kathy Kearsey
Vice- President - Marjolein van Altena
Treasurer - Lesley McCafferty
Secretary - Tina Bates
Care Coordinator - Joan Skelton
Events Coordinator - Karen Gray
Website Coordinator - Jennifer Bushell
Head of Training - Helen Green
Membership Secretary - Sheenagh Peirson
Internal Auditors - Jan Rogers, Karen Gray
The following changes of position have been requested:
Jennifer Bushell wishes to step down as Website Coordinator
Karen Gray wishes to step down as Events Coordinator and accept the role of Website Coordinator
Tina Bates wishes to step down/Share Role as Secretary
Joan Skelton wishes to share some of her tasks (Rescue Team Coordinator, visit adopters and
fosterers) Marilyn Anderson wishes to accept the task Rescue Team Coordinator, including visits
adopters and fosterers- Patricia Richardson wishes to accept the role of Events Coordinator.
We have therefore a vacancy for the role of Secretary (pref. Bilingual French/English), able to take
notes at the General and the Events Committee meetings and prepare these into minutes, access to
a computer to send & receive documents, 2 days a month.
We also have a vacancy for Membership Secretary for our French Members (Bilingual English/French
essential) to assist our Membership Secretary with contacts with French members. Auna volunteered
for this role.
As always we are desperately short of volunteers to assist the Care Coordinator to take care for and
work with the ASHA horses.
We would also like volunteers for the Events Committee.
JS General Care 2011
NEXT YEAR - 2011 Care team needs to be extended – and JS appealed for volunteers whatever you
can give, 2 hours, 1 morning per month – whatever you can give. This would then allow us to give the
committed team a break or cover holidays etc. Again you do not need to be a horsey person as
training and non horsey tasks could be given.
Management Committee agreed to take MA (member) already she assist in visits, organised canton
teams, but she does need help with French, she has in the past called on Christine Milligan & Pat
Lee.
KG/PR Events 2011
We really need to advertise our next event at the event taking place, so people can take flyers and
diarise it.
Open Day will be hosted in 2011 but not sure on what scale.
Change of personnel – PR will be taking over events from KG – floor accepted.
Talk of future events from PR
A big thank you to KG – she has done a great job and her shoes will be hard to fill, but PR will try.
Plea for event committee members – any ideas for events, keeping profile raised and money coming
in from general members would be greatly appreciated: please email these ideas to
pat.richardson@orange.fr
We are holding an events meeting next week and are going through the big money & high profile
events we will be doing these again in 2011, however, the lower priority events maybe left for a year.
An email will be sent soon with plans for events for forthcoming year.
KG – Website Future
We do have a Members Forum on the website, but unfortunately not many people are using it at
present. We are able to accept payment for merchandise, subscriptions and donations through
Paypal.
We are ranked number 1 in a Google search for ‘horses in distress France’, ‘neglected horses France’
and number 2 for ‘equine rescue France’ (our chosen search terms).
We are able to Blog any news and you will automatically receive an email to let you know there is a
new blog if you are registered with the website. The Committee need to keep this blog updated.
Finally, it is our mission to have a French version of the site. However, this is a huge task which is
proving to be quite problematic. But it is a priority for this year.
If anyone has any comments/feedback please let us know at info@ashafrance.org.
Please also bear in mind and share among friends that any purchases made from Amazon, please
use the link on our website and automatically ASHA will receive a donation at no cost to ASHA or
yourselves, just by using this link.
SP membership 2011
Thank you for all our staying members, challenge set to all members last year was to bring 2 friends
in each. This hasn’t happened mainly due to SP lack of French language to chase French members
renewals and it could take 2 weeks or 3 months – ideally we would like someone who could handle
the French membership side – Aune S volunteered.
Projects and intentions for 2011 by the President.
We have had some happy times with new adopters and placing our equines in happy new homes, but
that has been mixed with some sadness and the loss of some horses, Leila who was very old, and
Mambo who was brave & courageous till the end.
JS & MA work has been spread thanks to Canton teams, and thankfully none of the reports came to
anything, but no report went unchecked. The unsung heroes of ASHA are the Carers/Workers.
We do try and not flood you with emails, please check website and tell friends, neighbours, visitors
about our work/events. Our membership has grown but it never grows fast enough.
Can you think of new ways to attract new members, and as appeal already we desperately need new
volunteers to join our Events Committee, and other helpers, be it whatever little time you have to offer
– 1 day per month or 1 morning per month – and please don’t think it needs to be hands on with the
horses.
Our Secretary has a bump which is due March and she is looking for someone to share, if and when
she is unavailable or take the role fully – 2 afternoons per month. Any volunteers would be
appreciated.
Thank you to everyone who has supported.