Don’t forget to come to Godalming College’s Spring Benefit concert, a fundraising event sponsored by The Dan Eley Foundation. It is on March 14th at Godalming United Church. The superb music students will be playing their hearts out to raise funds for highly disadvantaged youngsters in their own backyard. Every penny goes to source....
With funds raised from our yearly spring benefit concert, performed by Godalming College students themselves, were able purchase and donate a marimba to the college music department. The marimba is an exotic percussion instrument used in Traditional Latin American and African music and it is the first time the college have had one. ...
In October Dan was in Cali for the inauguration of the 10th and 11th courses of our accountancy apprenticeship scheme. The courses will run simultaneously as part of our new expanded-format programme, training 60 students as bookkeepers. The programme has already trained over 250 youngsters from deprived urban communities in the city of Cali, Colombia....
It’s difficult to describe the feelings building up to an experience so significant and poignant, one which you know will be unlike anything you ever have or ever will experience in your whole life. I arrived in Cali just five days before my trip back to the Amazon to revisit the exact spot where I had my diving accident 5 ½ years ago. The spinal cord injury I sustained there had life-changing consequences which I still live with today and which have taken my life down a completely different course. It’s impossible to underestimate how pivotal that moment was....
It wasn’t long before I felt at home in Colombia, as most visitors who spend time there do. It’s so easy to meet people and make friends and I embraced the lifestyle and culture in Cali which is famed as one of the world’s salsa capitals and for its vibrant nightlife. I was welcomed warmly into my new post and it wasn’t long before I started a course of salsa classes. Everything seemed well, I was in the prime of my life physically, leading an active, independent and comfortable expat lifestyle. All that changed during my Christmas holidays when a couple of friends and I decided to go to the Amazon jungle to embark on what promised to be an...