Antiques valuation event to support Ugandan school with Shrewsbury links
14/06/2016
Money raised at an antiques valuation event in Shrewsbury today will go to support a Ugandan village school which has been named after a Shrewsbury woman.
The event is being held at Shrewsbury Abbey from 4pm to 7.30pm with our team of fine art specialists providing evaluations of antiques of all descriptions in return for a donation of £2 for each item valued. Refreshments will also be available.
The team will include fine art director Jeremy Lamond, senior auctioneer and valuer Andrew Beeston, picture specialist James Forster and silver and jewellery specialist Maryanne Lineker-Mobberley. They will be happy to provide valuations for a wide range of antiques and members of the public can take along photographs of large items, which they are unable to bring with them.
The specialists will be happy to arrange home visits after the event to view collections of antiques, paintings, ceramics, silver, jewellery, toys, Asian art and militaria.
All the money raised will go to support Margaret Junior School in the small parish of Kasanje near Musaka in Kulungu District of Uganda, one of the poorest countries in the world.
The school was established in 2004 by Kasujja Sarah, a retired deputy headteacher after her son, Mutebi Daniel (Danny), received sponsorship to read law at Kampala International University from Margaret West of Shrewsbury.
Margaret was in Uganda in 2003 visiting her Shropshire friends Roger and Wendy Ford, who were doing Voluntary Service Overseas. Danny, who lost the use of one arm in a road traffic accident, was studying at Masaka Vocational Rehabilitation Centre, where Wendy was teaching.
Danny had a passion to read law and Margaret, who was impressed by his attitude and hard work, offered to fund his course to make his ambition become a reality. Impressed by this generosity, Sarah decided to establish the school in Kasanje where she could teach poor children from the rural community and named it after Margaret.
The school started with 20 children and now has 350, many of whom are sponsored by Shropshire people who pay £120 a year to cover their fees.
Margaret, who with Mr Ford, former Shropshire chief probation officer, has helped to organise the antiques valuation event for the school, explained that there is a social stigma associated with disability in Uganda.
“Danny wanted to go to university to study law so that he could try and make things better for other disabled people in Uganda,” she said. “He has just opened his own law firm and has lots of clients. I am delighted that he has made the most of the opportunities he was given.
“Money raised at the antiques valuation event will go to pay teachers’ wages and the fees of children, whose parents cannot afford to pay for them to attend school. We already have quite a lot of people who sponsor children for £120 a year.”
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