Last day May Team:
This morning we hung a mural painted at one of our “Paint
for a Purpose” parties at eLangeni Community Preschool. The children and teachers were excited to
have colorful paintings on the wall!! If you’d like to host a painting party of
your own, contact me: anniefightspoverty@gmail.com Currently these are available in the
Lafayette, Indianapolis, St Louis, and Springfield IL areas. We also bought colorful chairs for the
students since it is winter and they currently sit on the cold concrete floors.
We delivered food to eLangeni Primary School and while we
were there, we learned about an upcoming field trip to the new national airport,
Hlane National Park, the Swazi TV Station, and border post to learn about
international travel. We found out that
our boy, Mazwi, and 3 other orphans were the only ones who have not been able
to pay - and therefore would not be
attending the fieldtrip. We of course
paid for Mazwi, but I couldn’t stand thinking about the other three kiddos who
would be left behind on this educational trip, so we paid for them as well -
$35 each if anyone wants to sponsor one of them! www.ifightpoverty.org/donate.html
or you can mail a check to 2436 N
Alabama Street Indianapolis IN 46205
Sanele, our TB patient, is still in the hospital and he
asked us to bring him more food. When we
arrived, we noticed that he was dressed (not in his hospital gown) so he looked
much better! He asked for a rotisserie
chicken, whole, that he planned to eat for dinner – so apparently his appetite
is much better too! :) If you’d like to chat with Sanele during his hospital
stay (he loves phone calls!), we bought him a cheap cell phone that accepts
incoming calls: +268 76295573 We
delivered some drawings and letters that the Springfield IL Matthew Project
kids (disadvantaged kids from Springfield Public Schools) wrote for him. He was thrilled to receive love from
America!!!
We then delivered food to 10 families in Malindza; many of them
were our new grade 1 and preschool students.
A gogo who has never met me looked skeptical when we laid down the food
on her doorstep and she asked “are you giving all of that to me for free?” Of
course we got a million “Thank yous” and “God bless yous” but these should
really be directed toward the Give Hope, Fight Poverty FOODOM program
fundraising director Mitali Saxena who created and funded this project for
years! Siyabonga!
One last thing until our next trip – and next blog… we need
continuous thoughts and prayers for our New Hope Primary school. We had one person from the Ministry of
Education come today and he was shocked that the school was entirely free. He asked how much the students pay for their
education and our teachers replied “nothing”.
He responded, “not even 1 rand???” (10 cents) and they laughed and said
no - even their uniforms, backpacks, and pencils are free. Furthermore, the kids learn solely in English
and are only allowed to speak English at school. They learn to read in English from day one
with the shelves full of picture books that have been donated. They also learn computers and have computers
in every classroom. These are all characteristics unlike any other rural Swazi
school in the nation and he, like us, wants to keep it going for years and
years to come. He is sending his supervisor tomorrow to inspect it as
well. If all goes well, we are hoping to
fully register and continue serving these amazing orphaned children who want
nothing more than to attend school!
If you’d like to join us on a future trip to Swaziland,
visit the “take action” page of our website for dates. If you’d like to host a fundraiser, contact
me. And if you’d like to continue
following our journey between trips, find me on facebook (Annie Elble Todt) or
our business page (Give Hope, Fight Poverty).
Thank you for your support!! We could do nothing without you… www.ifightpoverty.org
May Team Day 6:
This morning we took Mirriam to pay her Paramedic/EMT
college fees (Thanks mama and papa Todt!!) and Lungelo to pay his accounting
university fees (Thanks Inbodens!). We
also delivered a water tap to Philo and Mazwi’s house. Their tap broke and the
water was flooding their crops. While we
were there, Mazwi asked me if we could help them start a business. I asked what kind of business they wanted to
start and he said they want to sell sweets to their neighbors. Luckily we had a HUGE bag of candy in the car
(Thanks Jan Buckles!!) so the kids were excited to get their business already underway.
I love our little 11 year old entrepreneur!!
We went to volunteer at the eLangeni preschool and learned
that they have a few needs you may be able to help with. Nelly is trying to teach an upcoming unit on
shapes but can only cut them out of paper.
Do you have any plastic shapes
she can use as teaching tools? She also is requesting pre-school friendly puzzles as well as legos for building blocks.
If you have any of these items, Kait is traveling with a GHFP team in
June so you can mail them to her: 2436 N
Alabama Street, Indianapolis IN 46205 and she will take them to the
preschool.
Beish (Swazi partner) & I then had a meeting with UNICEF
about our Sanitation Across Swaziland program.
This program entails collecting used soaps from local Swazi hotels,
sanitizing them, and redistributing them to rural schools for use at the schools
and to send home with orphans living in granny or child-headed homes. We’ve been piloting this program with the
help of Sibane Hotel and Royal Swazi Spa for about 6 months now with much
success! The kids are healthier and
school attendance is up. UNICEF wishes
to partner with us as they already have the “WASH” program – Water Access,
Sanitation & Hygeine but currently their program only focuses on educating
about hygiene at the schools but does not give them the means to actually do so
(free soap for schools and homes). The director of the WASH program we spoke to
said that this is the most innovative idea that has passed his desk and he is
anxious to get the ball rolling and to scale it up across the nation. He is already making a list of both Swazi and
South African hotels to get more used soaps which will be crucial in the
scaling of the program. The goal of the
program is multifaceted – to decrease the soap waste in landfills near drinking
water, to offer jobs to local Swazis (to clean and distribute the soaps), and
to provide a means for the children to prevent life-threatening diseases caused
by the inability to practice proper hygiene (such as the Rotavirus). We’re glad to have someone else on board as
this is a major task!
More tomorrow – our last full day... If you’d like to help
us sustain our programming, visit www.ifightpoverty.org/donate.html
May Team Day 5 – Sunday:
This morning we met some of our girls for church in
eLangeni. The pastor spoke on how
everyone is expected to be children of God and follow God’s word – not only
when others are watching. This includes
giving to those less fortunate and sharing your blessings and talents. He said those people are the ones who will
have the most special place in heaven- those who give without expecting to
receive and who give without wanting recognition.
Later we took our sponsored college kids to Nando’s for a
special dinner. Njabuliso is studying
automotive engineering, Lungelo is entering his second year of accounting, and
Mirriam is in a healthcare program studying Paramedic/EMT. I am so so so proud of our college kids and
so thankful for our GHFP donors who make their education possible. It’s hard to believe that I met them as
primary school drop outs 8 years ago due to the fact that they were orphans and
could not pay for school fees. Now they
are kicking butt and blasting their way onwards and upwards toward a better
future. When Julia asked what Lungelo
likes to do for fun, he replied “STUDY!”
She thought he was joking until she saw the look on his face. I cannot begin to describe the challenges
these kids have tackled alone through hardwork and perseverance – always with a
smile on their faces. Njabuliso’s name
means “happy” and Raychel said “I know your mom got that right because I
haven’t seen anything other than a smile since I’ve met you!”
I hope every single day that these kids know how much I love
them and am so very proud of them. I
always tell them that I remember the day when I was taller and smarter than
them… but I will never see another one of those days again. God bless our kiddos and then bless them some
more…
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