We are absolutely delighted to let you know that Mo Mansoori has joined The Sabre Club Charitable Foundation as a Trustee.
Many of you will know Mo, with his infectious smile, good sportsmanship and kindness.
Mo started fencing after seeing it on TV at the age of 12. He has competed in sabre events since the age of 15. He has fenced at numerous World Cup and satellite events at Senior level for Great Britain achieving a career high of ranked 106 in the world, as well as success at domestic level. More recently he returned to the sport after a several years and started competing at Veteran events too achieving a gold medal in the Commonwealth Fencing Championships for Scotland. Mo has also been a qualified sabre coach through BAF for over 15 years and completed a safeguarding course in 2020.
Mo is involved in his company’s charity committee and is passionate to see the sport of sabre fencing reach a wider population than it currently does, especially where financial constraints could inhibit participation.
Mo was appointed for an initial term of three years from 7 September 2022.
We would like to express our deep gratitude to Pat Aiyenuro, one of our founding trustees, who recently resigned in order to allow her to be more effective in the other roles which she holds. These include, of course, her role as a Board Director of British Fencing.
Without Pat’s invaluable help setting up the charity would not have been possible.
We wish Pat the very best both professionally and personally.
We have been given a really good tip by a fencer and friend of sabre!
Use the Easyfundraising app and choose The Sabre Club Charitable Foundation as your cause – or someone else if you really must.
If you shop through the app – in more than 6,000 different stores we will get a donation as they get a referral payment. And it won’t cost you or us a penny.
All the funds raised will go towards supporting young fencers who need the help.
We don’t want it to be just about supporting teams and individuals at the elite end of the sport. That is not the main aim at all. We want to help make our sport as inclusive and accessible and enjoyable as possible.
By the way the request for trustees still stands. Even if you don’t have much time, but do want to help in some way we would love to hear from you.
We will be welcoming one new trustee soon but a couple more would be very useful. You don’t have to be old to be a trustee. In fact we need people who are close to the action as well. You could be an active fencer. You could be a parent. The main requirement is a love of sabre and a non partisan approach to life in general as well as fencing.
Thank you for your support. Both moral and financial.
Got some skills? Or enthusiasm for sabre? Or just want to help young people develop?
Why not become a trustee?!
We need your help.
We didn’t want to ask until you’d got to know us a bit – either directly or through the work we do via The Sabre Club – but now we really need your help.
It’s not an election, there’s room for more than one. In fact we would like a few with different skill sets and different points of view to complement eachother. We think a bit of debate is healthy and we like to listen and perhaps be persuaded.
You might think we doing things wrong and have a better idea. You might be right. We’d like to hear from you. We might disagree of course, but we will certainly gain from the input and thank you for it. So we would still like to hear from you.
So please just write to Peter Howes, Chair of the trustees via email to trustees@tsccf.uk or trustees@thesabreclubcharity.uk by messenger or on the sabre club Facebook page or twitter. Any way will do, just get in touch 🙂
If not a trustee, how about becoming a volunteer?
We need volunteers too even if Beth Davidson is doing a splendid job, which she definitely is. We will definitely appreciate your help and do everything we can to help you help us and so help the fencers, organisers, coaches, referees, parents and others involved in sabre who we care so much about.
So please don’t be shy. trustees@tsccf.uk is still the address to use.
We had great pleasure, on your behalf, in helping Luke Haynes get to the Euros in Antalya once he had been selected.
This is what he had to say to you afterwards 🙂
Luke frankly didn’t want to ask for funding, but we encouraged him, as we noticed he was really quite worried about how he was ever going to afford to go. Not surprising given the costs involved and which we mentioned in an earlier update post.
On the back of his performance in Antalya, both as an individual and as a valued team member, Luke will be off to Cairo for the World Championships. Again with a little help from your good selves.
We’d also like to thank Luke for making this video and letting us into his thoughts and emotions.
Why should you be helping fund GBR teams at major championships?
All the fencers still have to pay a large amount to represent their country and this is definitely not a good state of affairs. But that is the situation at present due both to the funds available and to the way in which those funds are allocated by British Fencing. So some fencers really need our help after they have put in so much effort and made sacrifices to be the best they can be. We try to help boost morale via The Sabre Club and financially via the charity.
Please donate more so we can help these and future young fencers to be the best they can be and to inspire others as well.
Thank you.
How can you contribute?
Sign up to smile.amazon and choose The Sabre Club Charitable Foundation if you use Amazon.
If you are selling stuff on Ebay or could be, when you list an item choose the charity ribbon and select The Sabre Club Charitable Foundation – the variable fees are reduced by the same percentage as your percentage contribution to the charity.
Make a direct donation via PayPal on the website. Plenty of buttons everywhere you look – sorry.
Make a direct bank transfer if you like – bank details on the website too.
Maybe you have time or expertise? If you might be able to help please get in touch.
So please do pay us a visit if you haven’t before or come back again if you have.
On behalf of the fencers and the trustees, thank you very much for your support.
We have very recently learned that the cost to the athlete, of being selected and having the privilege to represent GBR at the Senior European Championships is about £640 per athlete, not taking into account the cost of any personal coach – probably about £70 – £100 per athlete on top – so potentially a whopping £710 or more!
Some athletes are in distress! So we are letting you know and asking for your help.
What the athletes see when they are accepting their places is this:
Fencer costs for the Euros
Add to that flight costs of about £200 and you have £640 plus some food not included in the half board accommodation.
Add to that a personal coach if you have one, and you have all their costs potentially split across between 4 or 8 fencers, depending on the weapon. So, let’s assume the coach has a £200 flight, £300 accommodation as they could stay for the team event, transfers of £40 and food. So that’s at least £540 ignoring any coaching fee. Split between the maximum of 8 fencers gives you a minimum of £67 per fencer. Let’s round to £70.
So the minimum is £640 and this can grow to £710 or more.
Some athletes and their parents simply can not afford this without help.
We were recently asked by one already very generous donor, how we were for funds and we thought we were ok for now, but we were wrong. With the Europeans now, and the Worlds to come, we would be very grateful for some more donations so we can help athletes who are really struggling financially.
Who for?
Only for those who really need it, and even then not the full amount but up to 50% of the estimated basic costs levied by British Fencing. We are very pleased to say we have committed to one payment of £320 in response to a request for help.
How much?
Please let us have as much or as little as you can afford.
Don’t you have any money left from previous donations?
We have £1056 in the bank, of which £735 is earmarked for paying for the Euros800 purchased by Peter Howes, trustee on behalf of the foundation to pay for the last two team entry fees. However he is deliberately not taking payment at the moment so the charity has some cash in the bank. That basically only leaves £321 of actual funds.
Yes, the best way is really to set up a standing order or single contribution direct to the charity’s bank account onthe donations page. Sorry the gift aid for that needs a separate form at the moment. We’re working on making it easier in the future.
Please also explore the other ways to support and get in touch with any offers of non financial help too.
Thank you very much for reading this and for all your support. The fencers all really appreciate what you are doing for them.
We are very pleased to announce that between us (all us TSCCF donors that is) we have managed to raise enough to fund the €400 entry fees for both the women’s and men’s teams. The Euros have been purchased and we are getting ready to follow the teams’ progress via the sabre club on Instagram and Facebook in just over a week’s time. The team events are on 8 May.
Who is in the team is not up to us, but we are very glad we can help them to provide the opportunity and lessen the burden on the fencers even a little.
This time Jon Salfield is going with the women to Tunisia and Chris Buxton is going with the men to Madrid. There is no physio or other team support.
Not even for accommodation or coaching costs.
Representing GB is a privilege but it can prove to be an expensive one. We hope to change that.
GB’s women’s team with volunteer coach Jon SalfieldA happy young GB Team after finishing a brilliant 11th in Budapest It’s all about the hard work that goes in before the competition even starts
Thank you very much for all your contributions so far.
We have updated the funding page so you can see what is happening. But you probably want to see the effort and emotion of the young men and women striving to be the best they can be, which is why we do this in the first place. This is what Maria Chart had to say after the team’s disappointment in Istanbul.
What we don’t necessarily see is all the hard work that goes on behind the scenes and how the older fencers train with the younger ones to bring them on and develop them, many taking on unofficial mentor roles and helping out whenever they can while they all train extremely hard.
We’re very pleased to say we can now make the commitment for the final 2 Senior World Cups of the season and will also have some funds available to help younger fencers who need help to get to the British Youth Championships. You may have seen that we announced that fencers successful in getting their entry fee waived by British Fencing can also apply to us for help with other costs like travel and accommodation. We don’t have much at the moment but we feel everyone should be allowed their chance and this is a good opportunity to help.
So if you want to support, please go to the funding page and donate just £10 or more, of course, and we’ll put it to good use helping young people in our sport. Or just use the donate button.
If you don’t want to give directly, how about making use of your spending on Amazon, if you use them, and use Smile instead. It costs the same but your chose charity gets a little bit of money for most transactions. That can add up to a lot and at no cost to you.
The Sabre Club Charitable Foundation would like to say a big thank you to British Veterans Fencing for their generous donation of £100 in honour of the late, very great and much missed Dennis Hunt, who was such an amazing and charming supporter of Sabre and fantastic coach and friend. May he rest in peace.
It is really refreshing to see and hear from the Senior Women’s Sabre Team. We are very proud to be able to support them with the aid of your donations.
Before the team competition coach Jon Salfield managed to put on yet another cap and act as videographer so the team, with spokesperson Jenna Bray, could say thank you to you, the donors and supporters, before getting down to preparing for their first match.
After the competition, in which the team confirmed that they belong in the top 16 in the World, we managed to briefly catch up with Caiti Maxwell and Sophia Potter.
And we also managed to catch up with the youngest member of the team, Amy Westwell, fresh from the Junior European Championships and on her debut as a senior, who stepped in, along with Jenna Bray to cover for the injured Alex Davis and the Covid hit Maria Chart.
You’ll see they had a small but vocal support contingent throughout the day with Bea Abram-Moore and Alex Davis and company cheering on the team.
Please donate generously so we can continue to support both the Men’s and Women’s teams and make it a slightly less costly privilege for these hardworking and dedicated athletes.
The Sabre Club Charitable Foundation. Charity No: 1189637 