In an ever desperate effort to raise some funds for the South West Equine Protection charity, I picked up an idea from the Guardian newspaper of a couple of weeks ago. Aparently a young American woman run up a credit card debt of over £11,000 ($20,000) and appealed for people to give her money to pay it off. Surprisingly the donations came in and she reached her target. A couple of guys took up the idea and have built a site called 'dropcash' which allows you to link your site through PayPay (the e-bay bank) while, at the same time, displaying how much you have raised. The author of the site, Andre Torrez explains (I paraphrase) "People are reluctant to give to others in the street because they can't see the effect immediately. But, if you lived next door to a person and they came to you for help, you would be more inclined to give something because you can watch the effects of your donation".

I must say, when kids come round from the local school for sponsorship (as they very frequently do) we sign their form and give them cash. When the village hall or the playing field, etc. holds a fund raising function, they always get our support. You probably know that I recently returned a £50 prize to the school funds after surprisingly winning the raffle, thinking that there cause needed it more than I did. So, after finding that the only people who have bought anything from Amazon through this site, and so donated to SWEP, are Carol and I and the only people who have donated any cash to SWEP by means of the bubble 'Donate Now' buttons on this site - even though many have downloaded photographs, are Carol and I, I have decided to have one more try.

You will notice, if you ever go to the site that there is a donation of $25 so far. Guess who gave that? All you have to do is give as little as £1 or $1 (it doesn't matter what currency except that PayPay charge for conversion) and you will be able to see that you are making a difference. It may be a very large hill to climb but there are a lot of people out there. Why not give it a go? And if the rest of the world does not want to help rescue ponies and horses suffering cruelty, neglect and accident and we dont reach the target you still may have bought a bale of hay to feed them or paid part of a veterinary bill to save their life. That's not bad, is it?