Amovate’s new entertainment committee has drawn up its Calendar of Events for this area through 2014, which not only mirrors last year’s successful range of activities, but will build on them.

You may wish to make notes in your diary of the list of these social gatherings and reserve your places at any which capture your interest.

You may be aware of our recent announcement that, following suggestions from several people, we have now introduced a bonus for Amovate members to provide a tangible benefit for those who have joined the Association.

From now on, anyone who holds Amovate membership will be entitled to discounted ticket prices for all of these events, and also will be entitled to “priority boarding” when it comes to reserving your places.

This will take the form of a week’s “grace” after the initial announcement when only members of Amovate will be able to reserve their tickets at the discounted prices before they go on general sale.

And remember, Amovate’s rules say that a €15 annual membership covers not just that named individual but also their spouse or partner, entitling both to the discount.

If you are not a member but have enjoyed our various events then, by joining, you will quickly recoup your €15 membership fee simply by purchasing the discounted tickets to which you would then be entitled.

The year’s social events begin with a Valentine’s Day Dinner at the Vale da Telha Restaurant at the Pines Roundabout, on—of course!—Friday February 14^th.

The price here will be €17 for members and €20 for non-members, and numbers are limited to 80 diners. There will also be live music with Carlos Agapito.

Steve Baker will be selling the tickets, which can be reserved by contacting us at info@amovate.com or by contacting Steve on 968 166 570.

Once reserved, they can then be collected and paid for either on a Tuesday or Thursday between 4-5pm at the VDT Restaurant where he will make himself available.

As we have explained, there will be a week’s grace for members to purchase ahead of non-members and you can also contact an Amovate Committee Member to help secure the reservation / purchase.

This will be the case for all Amovate events throughout the year, which are (fuller details of each event will be announced closer to the date):

FEBRUARY 14, Friday: Valentine’s Day Dinner, Vale da Telha Restaurant, €17 for members, €20 for non-members.

MARCH 29, Saturday: An ABBA evening at the Vale da Telha Hotel Marquee. Tickets €5 for members, €7.50 for non-members.

MAY 3, Saturday: A Family Fun Day Of Tennis and a Barbecue at the Amovate Tennis Courts on the Monte Clerigo road from Vale da Telha. No charge—bring your own picnics etc.

JUNE 21, Saturday: Our second annual Summer Solstice Dinner at O Paulo Restaurant on the Arrifana headland. Details to be announced.

JULY 19, Saturday: Family Fun & Music Day, perhaps Country Music, on the land between and behind The Karisma and the Vale da Telha Restaurant on the Pines roundabout. Details to follow.

AUGUST 16, Saturday: Annual Vale Da Telha Music Festival in the grounds of The Old Schoolhouse, Vales. Admission Free.

SEPTEMBER 20, Saturday: Annual Gala Ball at the Vale da Telha Hotel marquee on the Pines roundabout. Details to follow.

OCTOBER 25, Saturday: Portuguese Night at the Vale da Telha Restaurant.

DECEMBER 20, Saturday: Christmas Party in the marquee at the Vale da Telha Hotel, Pines roundabout. Details to follow.

Amovate is proud to announce that thanks to the amazing generosity of our members and the people of this area we have now bought the defibrillators that will be such a life-saving asset.

This incredibly warm-hearted community leapt into action once we announced the project to raise €4,500 for these two machines and a piece of training equipment. Such was the incredible response that the money was raised WITHIN A MONTH both on Vale da Telha and from the surrounding areas.

These state-of-the-art defibrillators were ordered from the United Kingdom, and are now in transit to Vale da Telha.  The more sophisticated of the two machines, which is to be donated to, and used exclusively by, the Bombeiros had to be calibrated in Portuguese.  The defibrillators have computerised spoken instructions as you work with them, and this more advanced machine had to its vocal software re-calibrated from English to Portuguese. This is due to the fact that the defibrillator is to be used by the professional paramedics of the Bombeiros to service the entire Aljezur region and its 5884 inhabitants, from Odeceixe in the north to Carrapateira in the south.

Up to now the Bombeiros have possessed only one defibrillator for their four ambulances, so the new machine doubles their capacity to respond to the type of emergency where their use is essential.

The simpler, but still highly-sophisticated, defibrillator to be kept on Vale da Telha will continue to voice the instructions in English, with a number of volunteers from the Portuguese and Expat community being trained to use it.

And there is no shortage of volunteers! 

As you will know by now the Bombeiros are keen to establish a corps of volunteers of all different nationalities on VdT and surrounds to be trained by them, initially in Basic CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation), which you may recognise from the Vinnie Jones “Stayin’ Alive” commercials.

Then, they will ask those volunteers who become certified in CPR through this training if any of them wish to be further trained to become part of a group of individuals thus qualified to use the defibrillator kept on Vale da Telha.

More than 70 people turned up at Amovate for the inaugural meeting hosted by the Bombeiros at the Old School House in Vales on Thursday January 9^th when their experts outlined their plans and explained what the classes involved.

Vale da Telha resident Sue Kenyon, a UK-certified trainer and instructor in Hands-Only CPR and also use of AED (automatic devices) worked with the team from the Bombeiros to explain what will be required.

More than 50 people immediately signed up for the CPR training course, with more registering their interest in the following weeks. If you have not yet applied but wish to take part, please contact us at info@amovate.com or to Sue Kenyon direct at diversue@gmail.com we will add you to the list, letting you know in due course when your training session is to be held.

It was decided that the training sessions will each be restricted to a maximum of 16 people, in four groups of four, to make each session more manageable.

Sue will be booking the training sessions and contact will be made directly by e-mail or telephone to let all the volunteers know which group they are in and when their training sessions will be held.

The first takes place at The Old School House, Vales, on Tuesday 11th February 2014 from 14:00 – 17:00, and the 16 people involved have already been informed.  Sessions will then take place every two weeks until every volunteer has been trained to the required certified standard.

Sue explained: “As you will appreciate, we have a large number of people wishing to train so, in an effort to provide the best initial distribution of trained personnel, we are offering one place per household for the first few sessions.

“Please rest assured that nobody will miss the opportunity to train; there will be as many sessions held as is necessary.  “We look forward to working with you on this great initiative.”

Incidentally, if you or anyone else is unable to make it to the training session allocated to them, you needn’t worry.  All you have to do is let us know, and that place will be offered to the next person on the list, whilst your name will be put down for a later date.

Here is an announcement to make your heart beat faster!

Amovate is working with other local community groups to buy from the UK two state-of-the-art defibrillators specifically to benefit the residents up here on Vale da Telha and the surrounding areas.

Several other groups, including the Tuesday quiz players and the Vale da Telha Golf Society have already pledged their financial support, as we begin the process of raising the funds for machines the Bombeiros say will be valuable life-saving aids to what is largely an ageing retirement community.

It is expected that the two defibrillators, and a training machine will cost in the region of €4,500, so all the fund-raising help we can get from everyone in the community will be invaluable to achieve that target.

But ahead of this we have already joined forces with the Bombeiros who have inspired this project, asking Amovate for support in getting it off the ground and launching the drive to buy these lifesaving machines.

One of these will be placed with the Bombeiros for the use of the entire Aljezur region and its 5884 inhabitants, from Odeceixe in the north to Carrapateira in the south.

The other will be kept permanently here on Vale da Telha.

The Bombeiros are keen to establish a corps of volunteers of all different nationalities on VdT to be trained by them, initially in Basic CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation), which you may recognise from the Vinnie Jones “Stayin’ Alive” commercials.

Then, they will ask those volunteers who become certified in CPR through this training if any of them wish to be further trained to become part of a group of individuals thus qualified to use the defibrillator kept on Vale da Telha.

The inaugural meeting of what we hope will be a project that becomes a Community-wide exercise will be hosted by the Bombeiros at the Old School House in Vales on Thursday January 9^th when their experts will outline their plans.

They will provide full information, so everyone will know how the programme and the training will unfold.

Then, the Basic CPR training classes operated by the Bombeiros and by Amovate member and retired surgeon Dr David Quinton will begin later in January at a date to be announced.

We hope this project will become a Community exercise supported both by volunteers who become proficient in CPR and the use of the defibrillator, and also financially by everyone joining in the fund-raising activities and making contributions however large or small.

We know there are a number of people living up here who have retired from the nursing and medical professions, and even some former UK police officers, who already have experience in this field.

We would hope these experienced people will be amongst the first to offer their services.

The life-saving defibrillator which is to have a permanent home up here will be kept at the Hotel Vale da Telha at the Pines Roundabout, a central point in the community.

It will be accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the newly-trained volunteers.

Also, of course, several members of the Aljezur Bombeiros also live on Vale da Telha, which means there should always be a trained operator to use the defibrillator whenever an emergency arises that requires its use.

Amovate is to purchase one defibrillator outright from cash currently in our Charity Fund, thanks to the support of our members and friends at our various functions throughout the year.

You will recall that Amovate, working with two UK Charities, recently brokered and part-subsidised financially, the amazing donation of more than €50,000 worth of firefighting and life-saving equipment to our local Bombeiros, something which made newspaper headlines both here and back in the UK.

And within the past couple of weeks some of that equipment has been used to cut people free of their crashed vehicles up here in two serious incidents on Vale da Telha.

We are also providing an expensive and much-needed laptop to a care centre which has looked after a couple of our members in recent months whilst also, in the past two or three years, supplying nine wheelchairs to Portimao Hospital and funds to the Madrugada Charity to buy a ripple bed to ease the suffering of long-term bedridden patients.

Now, we plan to turn our 2014 Charity Fund into a drive for the two defibrillators, one of which is to be presented to the Bombeiros who currently have just the one to share amongst their four ambulances and two support vehicles.

There is absolutely no question these machines will save lives over the coming years—perhaps even yours, or a member of your family.

So we are asking all of you that if you think you can help in some way could you please attend the January 9^th meeting at Amovate when the Bombeiros will outline and explain the project.

The initial Basic CPR training will make sure you can instantly and automatically answer these questions:

• Do you know what to do if someone next to you collapses, perhaps suffering a heart attack or some other serious medical condition?
• Can you make the difference in saving the life of that person?
• Do you know the fastest way to get the Bombeiros onto the scene to help you and the victim?
• Do you know the information that you will need to relay to them to ensure everything possible is done quickly and correctly?

We need you to turn up and offer your help, because Dr Quinton and the Bombeiros can train you to fill in those gaps.

The Christmas Party at the Marquee on Sunday December 22^nd, beginning at 7.30pm—details of which can be found here on the Amovate website—will also represent the launch of our Defibrillator Fund to raise the money for that second machine to be presented to the Bombeiros, and a training machine.

A Tombola will be held during the evening to kick start the fund-raising and we would also ask our members and friends if they could donate prizes for the Tombola, to help make it a real success.

For example, Paulo at O Paulo Restaurant in Arrifana has become an enthusiastic supporter of the scheme and has kindly donated a meal for two at the restaurant as one of the prizes.

So, if you feel you can donate something worthwhile as an attractive prize please let us know. You can hand your donation to any Committee Member, whose names you will find by clicking on “Committee 2013-14” in the top strapline on the website’s home page.

You can also donate by e-mailing us at the address below and we will arrange a time and place to either collect your gift or have it dropped off to us at Amovate. Our e-mail address is:

info@amovate.com

Your support in the past has enabled us to help so many people and is already saving lives around the Aljezur area. We hope and pray we can continue to count on you in this latest very worthy cause which is not simply an Amovate project but one which, with your help, will become a Community Project.

THE AMOVATE COMMITTEE

FOR YOUR INFORMATION:

Defibrillation is the definitive treatment for the life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias, ventricular fibrillation and pulseless ventricular tachycardia. Defibrillation consists of delivering a therapeutic dose of electrical energy to the affected heart with a device called a defibrillator. This depolarizes a critical mass of the heart muscle, terminates the arrhythmia, and allows normal sinus rhythm to be reestablished by the body’s natural pacemaker, in the sinoatrial node of the heart.

A major breakthrough was the introduction of portable defibrillators used out of the hospital. This was pioneered in the early 1960s by Prof. Frank Pantridge in Belfast.

Today portable defibrillators are among the many very important tools carried by ambulances.

They are the only proven way to resuscitate a person who has had a cardiac arrest unwitnessed by EMS who is still in persistent ventricular fibrillation or ventricular tachycardia at the arrival of pre-hospital providers.

Gradual improvements in the design of defibrillators, partly based on the work developing implanted versions, have led to the availability of Automated External Defibrillators.

These devices can analyse the heart rhythm by themselves, diagnose the shockable rhythms, and charge to treat. This means that no clinical skill is required in their use, allowing lay people to respond to emergencies effectively.