Share In Their Future

Sponsor Travels to Kenya and Visits Child

Children, Incorporated sponsor Christine Brown recently travelled to Kenya with her son to visit and volunteer at a missionary orphanage in Nairobi.  One of the main highlights of this eye-opening trip for Christine and her son was a vist to the nearby Children, Incorporated project, Maria Immaculata School, to meet their sponsored child Lucy.  "It was a wonderful experience!" writes Christine.  "We were able to take her gifts and even return a week later on 'Visitor Day' and meet her step-mom.  They showed us the water supply tanks that Children, Inc has bought for the school.  I was very proud to meet Lucy and the people running the school. And I was glad to see my sponsorship dollars at work, good work."  Christine's visit with Lucy and the administrators at Maria Immaculata School underscores the unique opportunity and joy of actually visiting with a sponsored child.  

Christine's son Luke, Lucy, and Christine inside the school   

 

    Outside the school with Lucy, another student, and coordinator

                                       

        This hand-made necklace was given as a gift to Lucy.   

        Christine and Luke's photo is on one side and Lucy's

        is on the other.  This artwork was created by Christine's

        friend Sheila Earhart, whose art is displayed online

        at halohill.blogspot.com

For more information on Christine Brown's travels to Kenya, access her blog here.

 

Life in a Korean Orphanage

All of our Korean projects are housed in group homes.  These facilities receive some support from the Korean government, but that funding has been cut dramatically in recent years.  Consequently, the support we provide to our Korean children is now more important than ever. 

Some of the children in these homes are orphans, but many were born to young, unwed women who were unable to care for them.  Children often live in these facilities from infancy to adulthood.  Upon graduation, they typically go to work or attend trade school or university.  It is not uncommon for a child who grew up in a group home to later return to that institution as a teacher or social worker.

The children typically study for many hours each day:

The typical group home has an on-site library:

Staff strive to feed the children a healthy, balanced diet.  Most snacks consist of fruits and vegetables:

The group homes are usually housed in comfortable, modern buildings:

The dormitories are structured so that the children live in family-like groups of five to ten people:

Here, a group of children costumed as royalty perform a skit for Foreign Division Director Luis Bourdet:

In accordance with Korean custom, many children sleep on mats on the floor (which is heated), but some homes contain bunk beds:

The youngest residents receive special care and attention:

Many homes offer music classes:

This building contains both living quarters and classrooms for kindergarteners:

Ratnam School Dedication

The new building at the Ratnam School in Guntur, India opened in January of this year, and it was dedicated during Foreign Division Director Luis Bourdet's recent visit to India. 

Luis brought back these photos:

 

Classes Under Way at New Nairobi School

By means of a grant from philanthropist Barry Greenstein, CI recently helped to fund extensive renovations to the St. John Community Center School in the Pumwani district of Nairobi, Kenya.  Classes began in the new building on May 5, and the school's principal sent us this update:

Dear Children, Incorporated,

Congratulations!  We have made it to the end.  We are delighted after the completion of Phase II of the new building.

The children are very excited in their new classes, workshops, and laboratories.  Children are running all over now that the school has opened for this term.  You can tell how happy the children are in their classes, and this is a great service to these children from the slum.  The poverty in their new homes is forgotten the moment they step into their new classrooms.  The school serves 305 children, and if St. John's and its partners were not there for them, they would be in the streets begging and being abused.

As a result of these new facilities, the school will offer grade 8 and will enable children who would otherwise have dropped out after grade 7 to sit for their grade 8 exams, which are very important.  Children are very excited since they will now complete their primary education with teachers they are used to.  We expect that this will boost their academic performance.

This is a great milestone, and we are happy with the support we have received from Mr. Barry Greenstein through Children, Incorporated.  Our partners have made this dream a reality.    We are sincerely grateful and appreciate our partnership.

Best regards,
Peter Njuguna
Manager, St. John's Community Center and School

Mosquito Net Distribution

Children, Incorporated recently distributed mosquito nets to several projects in Africa and India.  A generous donation from Steve and Penny Carlile of Marshall, Texas funded much of this initiative. 

Each year, malaria sickens millions of people throughout the world, and thousands of those people die.  The use of insecticide-treated bed nets is a key factor in malaria prevention, and we aim to provide nets to all of our children who are at risk of contracting the disease. For more information on how you can help us keep our children healthy, please visit our website or contact us at (800) 538-5381 or at inquiries@children-inc.org. 

Children at the Dandora Center in Nairobi, Kenya received new nets in April:


Children at the Durgi Home in Guntur, India were thrilled to hang the nets over their beds:
 

Note from a Project Volunteer

We require our project volunteers to send us regular updates and evaluations, and they often include friendly notes with their reports.  We recently received this message from a volunteer in the Philippines:

“With the help from friends at CI we can do a lot for our children. I am happy to note that the center is really the "center" of the lives of more than 30 families (we have 60 children on our CI program).  So, that totals to about a 100-150 people.  We gather every Sunday morning, and the young people sing and play their music, they also learn to use the computer with the help of the older kids who have had training in computers.  The mothers have English classes and we all have food together many times, especially during birthday celebrations.  The center has become the hub, sort of.  We are so happy to have our very own place, a decent place, a beautiful place, and the people have a sense of ownership, so they keep the place clean and pretty all the time.  The children are there constantly!!  We have plants and ornamentals in pots, even as small place as it is, we can make it very pretty!”

Polly Joson

Director and Co-Founder
Fortune Center
Marikina City, Philippines

St. John's Community Center School Now Complete

For the past several months, Children, Incorporated has supported the construction of a new school facility at the St. John's Community Center in Pumwani, a slum in Nairobi, Kenya.  The school is now complete, and Luis Bourdet, Director of the Foreign Division, attended its opening ceremony in April.  The new building contains nine classrooms as well as space for labs, offices, workshops, and a library.  It will serve children attending grades one through eight, and it will qualify them to receive the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education.

Children, Incorporated funded approximately half of this project, and our participation was made possible by a generous grant from philanthropist Barry Greenstein.  We are extremely grateful to Mr. Greenstein for facilitating this project, and we extend our best wishes to the children of St. John's. 

The new school is housed in a large, modern building:















Foreign Division Director Luis Bourdet attended the school's opening ceremony:

Sponsors Donate Hearing Aid to Lebanese Student

All of CI's children are impoverished, and many struggle with additional burdens like health problems, disabilities, family turbulence, and violence within their communities.  It is these children who often benefit the most from the support and stability that sponsorship provides. 

Rafiq is an 18-year-old student in Lebanon.  His neighborhood is frequently rocked by armed conflicts and riots, and his school is sometimes closed for safety reasons.  Rafiq is extremely hard-of-hearing, and his disability has slowed his academic progress.  For two years, he has attended a school that enrolls only  students who are deaf or hard-of-hearing, and he is doing well--but because he did not receive adequate instruction in his early life, he is four grades behind the other students in his age group. 

Rafiq's future is brightening, however, thanks to his own strong work ethic and the unfailing support of his teachers.  His CI sponsors, Brian Hyde and Joe Fiorello, have also played a very important role in his life.  Since they began sponsoring Rafiq in 2006, they have helped to pay his school fees, and they have provided him with additional funds for clothing and other necessities. 

Most recently, Brian and Joe paid for a high-quality digital hearing aid for Rafiq, which will help him in school and greatly improve his chance of finding good employment after he graduates.  Brian and Joe arranged for Rafiq to receive the hearing aid at a special birthday celebration [pictured at left], and he thanked them with this letter:

 
"I was happy that I will participate in an art exhibition, I have prepared my drawing but n ow I don’t know if  we will do that or no.  I am sending you a copy of my drawing [pictured at right] and I hope you will like it. Thank you very much for your generous gift, I have got new fully digital hearing aid it was a wonderful surprise for me to have a new hearing aid as a birthday gift. I had a nice party on my birthday the lions club came to our school they brought cake and we have celebrated my birthday and another students birthdays also."

New Furniture for Children Affected by the 2004 Tsunami

The area surrounding the Dadella Children's Center in Sri Lanka was badly affected by the 2004 tsunami. Last year, Children, Incorporated completed construction on ten new houses for Dadella families. We recently received funds to buy each Dadella child a bed, a mattress, and a pillow.  Every Dadella family also received a plastic table and four chairs.

In response to this donation, one of the Dadella volunteers wrote:

"We extend our sincere gratitude and thanks for the helping hand given to the families by providing needed household goods. All the families greatly appreciate the gifts. There were three families who had never used such goods in their lifetime as they use ordinary mats for sleeping purposes. Those children were surprised to sleep on foam mattresses. We were also so pleased to be able to provide the children and their families with a plastic table and four plastic chairs. The family members, especially the children, were very happy as the majority of them use the tables and chairs for homework and to store their school supplies. The kids use those given items with great joy. Most of the families were short of household goods, as their belongings were taken away by the tidal waves during the Tsunami. Those families extend their gratitude. We observe the development in these families; slowly and gradually their lives have been tremendously improved."

Above: A girl who attends the Dadella Children's Center sets up her new bed.

New Building for Kenyan School

A new three-story classroom building is under construction at the St. John  Community Center in Kenya.  This expansion will provide nine new classrooms and will greatly increase the educational opportunities for the children in the Pumwani area.