Award Winners!

14 November 2022

2 Golds and a Silver!!

What a night! The Red Funnel Awards 2022 were held on Thursday 10th November -the tourism Oscars! The Sanctuary was represented by Tracy Hawkes (Visitors Services Manager), Lucy Smith (Online Fundraising and Social Media Manager), Chloe Remnant (Yard Manager) and Alyshia McLoughlin (Hospitality Assistant).

The night was our most successful yet!

Grazers Café won Silver, as runners up in the Best Café/Tea Room on the Island for 2022. This is a massive achievement for Chef Andrew Barton and the Kitchen and Café team, in a category that is incredibly competitive! Their hard work raises money for our donkeys every single day of the year, apart from Christmas Day, and we are indebted to them for their hard work (and of course their fabulous food).

We weren't done yet. Next up, the sanctuary won Gold as the winner of the ‘Best Place For Dogs’! We pride ourselves on our dog friendly approach inside and outside at the sanctuary. We have lovely walkways and paths for dog walkers, we run doggy events for our 4-legged friends, and there's always a dog biscuit to be found at meet and greet and in the café. We even have some of our staff bring their dogs to work.

But the BIG award was the real bonus of the night. We came away with gold for the 'Best Large Attraction' on the island! We were shocked but thrilled to have beaten lots of the ‘big league’ attractions to win this award. We have stayed true to ourselves as an animal sanctuary, and people enjoy our environment, love to get involved with our donkeys and the work we do, and really become part of the community that we have built. We are overwhelmed and so appreciative of the recognition that this award has given us.

Thank you so much to everybody who supported the sanctuary and voted for us. It has been a tough few months and this has brought delight to everybody who works here! It is just the bit of good news that we were all hoping for.

Award photo credits: Pamela Parker, Newsquest

See Our Other Awards

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Equine Treatment Centre

by abigail.fox • 7 November 2024

In late 2022, we started fundraising to establish an equine clinic at the sanctuary. Thanks to your generosity, we raised £125,000 from the initial campaign. This is ringfenced to spend on the Equine Treatment Centre. In the summer of 2023, we paused fundraising and undertook a separate feasibility study, using the generous free support of a civil engineer. We used this opportunity to make sure our build plans were making the very best use of your donations and the funds we had raised. We’ve tweaked the initial plan and have planning permission to undertake a project that will greatly support our high standards of equine welfare. We plan to: Repurpose an existing structure to house the Equine Treatment Centre thus reducing construction costs. Construct an equine rehabilitation barn on the site originally intended for the clinic. Create an isolation barn at the site’s perimeter. This will mean we can provide the very best care for equines needing isolation for medical treatment or observation. We will focus first on building the new barns, then move on to repurposing existing structures into our Equine Treatment Centre. The work cannot start until spring at the earliest, when we hope the ground will have dried out and the machinery will be able to move around the site. We need to make sure our precious paddocks are well looked after while the building work takes place.