The Mare and Foal Sanctuary collaborates with Home-Start to provide books for the local community

We are committed to working with the local community and have recently been working with Home-Start Teignbridge to provide books for families during these challenging times.  

The collaboration between The Mare and Foal Sanctuary and Home-Start provides families in the Teignbridge area with pre-loved books, puzzles and colouring books that have been donated to one of the five Sanctuary charity shops. The books are swapped by Home-start volunteers who come over regularly to the Sanctuary’s Reuse and Recycle Centre and are then sold on later to generate much needed income to continue providing life-long, loving care to over 220 horses and ponies. 

Home-Start is made up of a network of volunteers, providing expert support to help parents with young children who may be experiencing life-changing events, isolation, and the strains of life. This work has even more important due to the additional stressors that the Coronavirus pandemic has put onto family life.  

The project has been running since January and so far, 15 families have been involved in the book swap. The project aims to build positive relationships between parents and children and provide educational resources at a time when schools and libraries have been closed due to the pandemic. 

Dawn Green, Retail Area Manager said: ‘‘The Mare and Foal Sanctuary is proud to be supporting the local community through this book project. We are committed to helping both people and ponies.’’ 

In the future we hope to provide donated children’s cookbooks to enable families to create healthy, balanced, and nutritional meals to aid children’s development.   

If you would like to donate books to this project, please email [email protected]