AFPOP
Afpop - Association for Foreign Residents and Visitors. Many of you will have heard of Afpop, some of you won’t. Afpop (to quote their own Facebook page) specialises in providing a comprehensive range of information, services and support to foreign residents and visitors to Portugal. But it is so much more. There is also a social side to Afpop and they also are extremely supportive of officially registered charities
On their website you can find a ‘Charities’ section which lists lots of different organisations and the good work they do.
Once a year at their BLiP event (Better Living in Portugal) they give stands to charities, free of charge, so the work can be show-cased. I wrote a blog after we took part in Blip 2023.
Now, to talk about the social side of things. There are a number of Afpop events organisers, all busy planning fun things for members and their guests to take part in.
A few years back I was invited, by the Silves area events organiser Heather Pearce, to give a presentation about our charity at a coffee and biscuits morning at the Holiday Inn Armação de Pêra.
More recently the Albufeira Events Organiser Karen Haythorpe- Green created a quiz afternoon at Al Gharb Coffee Roasters in Albufeira, where I also gave a presentation.
There have been several lunches organised by Karen. At these I have also given short presentations and we were generously rewarded with both food and cash donations.
However, last month we received a new & exciting piece of news from Afpop. Anybody who is not an Afpop member that attend events must pay an additional 3€ on the cost of an event. That money is collected by Karen and is then donated to Algarve Emporium Charity each month.
My thanks go out to Afpop & its event organisers and even more so to the Afpop members and their guests.