The story of the T-Club (Supporters' Club)

This story started in 2007.

Our beloved dog Yoda, a pumi breed, crossed the Rainbow Bridge. This was an extremely hard time for me, I missed him a lot, I was constantly looking for something to spend my time with. After a long search I found the website of the Noah's Ark Animal Shelter. The forum proved to be a good reading as I it served as an invaluable source of information: from there I always knew what kind of help is needed at the moment and what the community is collecting money for.

That's how I started to collect the 1 and 2 HUF coins in 2007. I collected them diligently, and with the help of Elisabeth, a newspaper seller at the corner – and a big animal lover, too – we placed a donation box labelled for the animal shelter in the shop, waiting for the everyday customers to throw in some change. And to our surprise the huge 5 litres box was full after one week! Now the only question was how we would send the incoming donations to the shelter. As I wasn't strong – or brave? - enough to visit the shelter myself at that time, I asked a good friend from the shelter's web forum, Gabesz, to do it for me – and I'm very grateful to him until today. Of course, after that the first donations were sent, nothing could have stopped me anymore...

I collected money, organized meetings, tried to find sponsors, and it was always Gabesz who took the money to the shelter. This went on for a year. In August 2008 I pulled myself together and visited the shelter myself. For the first time I was flabbergasted, just stood there and didn't know whom I might cuddle or play with. The farmyard was a wonder: with one hand I cuddled a dog, when Suzy the red deer appeared behind me. The emus, ducklings, piglets, raccoons, each and all, brought joy and love to my life, as all of them are real personalities.

From that day on, as if I had been pulled there by some magnetic force, I visited the Noah's Ark every Saturday. I participated in the voluntary work, helped, and it felt as if my soul had been filled with new energy ever and again. I met new volunteers every time, and made friends with them easily, as we had one and the same call: to help the animals.

We built a firm network of friendship with the other volunteers. We used to meet on weekdays as well, for a coffee and a short small-talk. Of course, we usually talked about the animal shelter and its problems, and how we could get more money to support our goal – this was always a topical question as the shelter operated – and operates also today – without any kind of normative support from the state - the only major income is the 1% tax donations. (In Hungary, all citizens who pay taxes have the opportunity to donate 1% of their paid tax to a non-profit organization or a church they choose.)

On one occasion when we had coffee, I told Courage that we should found a club in which all members would pay a regular fee, and the fee could serve as a donation to the shelter. It would bring some money, after all. And then ideas started to come up, how we should organize all this. At the weekend we talked to the staff of the shelter about this and we decided to start a Supporters' Club, or as we call it, the T-Club (from the Hungarian name Támogatói Klub). The four of us, Viki, Éva, Courage and me, became the founding members, and we started to advertise the club and search for potential members. We started out with 15 members.

And in April 2009, at last, our webpage was up and running (for which we are very grateful to its webmaster), and the T-Club started to work as an official organization. At that time we had 19 members who donated 32,000 HUF altogether.

We were as happy as we could be. It was wonderful to know that now we can help to achieve our common goal in a more efficient way, and to see how many people were willing and eager to join our noble cause.

And now the data – however, I don't want to bore anyone with dry statistics. Those who are interested in our work, please visit our webpage – all the info is there. Just one piece of data that shows how successful this little community has become: in December 2009, the club had

134 members, and the donations for 2009 summed up to 1,672,300 HUF.

I don't think many animal shelters have such a wide network of supporters. It is a huge success for us that so many people consider us worthy of their support. We are very grateful to all who helped and donated even the smallest amount of money, and we hope that even more people will join us in 2010.


Yoda Magdi