Thank you from the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) to all ADN readers who have sent their used stamps to us. We are DESPERATE for any amount of stamps at anytime of the year. With the Christmas period nearly here this is the perfect time to start saving stamps for us!

RNIB are UK’s leading charity offering information, support and advice to over two million people with sight problems. Our pioneering work helps anyone with a sight problem – not just with Braille, talking Books and computer training, but with imaginative and practical solutions to everyday challenges. Every day 100 people start to lose their sight. Your support helps rebuild lives devastated by sight loss.

Almancil International Rotary Club (AIRC) has, for a number of years, supported the 'Association of Mental Illnesses Families and Friends of the Algarve' (UNIR). Centre Director Dra Margarida Trindade heads a day care centre in Loulè where persons with mental disabilities are given occupational therapies.
When Dra Margarida asked for help towards a new UNIR centre in Portimão, AIRC member Dr Raymond Parfait organised a sports event at the Conrad Hotel which raised 4,000 euros. Sadly, however, Dra Margarida was unable to raise the balance of the money needed to pay for the centre so it couldn't go ahead.

Pint-sized ghouls with streaks of green in their hair, pointy red fingernails and chalk-white faces arrived by the score at Quinta Shopping to turn this year’s Halloween party into a seriously scarey affair. With flowing capes, floaty grey net wraps and, for some young ladies a touch of ghostly Victoriana, the dress was fancy in every respect, and the fun to be had was the best ever.

Associação de Caridade – Mãos de Ajuda (Charity Association – Helping Hands) is now in operation and opened the doors of its new charity shop in Tavira for the first time on 2nd November.

The first item sold was a golf bag and during a brisk morning’s trading many other items including two garden gnomes departed to new homes. The primary aim of the association is to raise money for people in need in and around Tavira which will identify specific projects in due course.

Anyone growing up in the 40's or 50's would probably have known someone who had polio - a crippling and potentially deadly infectious disease which spreads from person to person and can invade an infected person's brain and spinal cord, causing paralysis.
In some cases the virus affected the muscles that helped sufferers breathe. In 1928 a device known as the iron lung was developed by Philip Drinker and Louie Shaw. This device would be placed over a patient's body to take over their breathing. Most patients would spend around two weeks in the device but many polio survivors with permanent respiratory paralysis continually use modern jacket-type ventilators that are worn over the chest and abdomen.

Rotary Club Estoi Palace International held its annual Quiz Night on Friday, 28th October at A Floresta Restaurant, in Almancil. The quiz was preceded by an excellent meal prepared and served by the hardworking A Floresta team.

73 people took part in the quiz divided into teams of up to seven. The question master was Rotarian Shirley Dunne who posed a series of challenging questions designed to test the general knowledge of participants.

The mission of the Rotary Club Estoi Palace International (RCEPI) is to provide service to others particularly in the local community, to promote high ethical standards, and to advance world understanding, goodwill and peace.

To ‘Tell our story’, promote Rotary and increase our Membership, RCEPI held a wine tasting event at the About Wine Garrafeira in Faro.

Algarve residents Graham Hewitt and Ian West completed their crazy '1000 Minutes Bowls Marathon' succesfully on Wednesday morning. The two took part in order to raise money to buy specific items for Centro de Acolhimento Temporario Gente Pequena (A children´s residential home) in Vila Real de Santo Antonio.