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Joe Silwenga reports:

Mwomboshi Settlement Village has no government school and the residents send their children to a community school within the settlement village, initiated by Makeni Ecumenical Centre to help young children access basic education. The school runs from grade one to grade seven.

For the past two years the school management has been making efforts to raise the standards of the school to equal that of the government schools in Zambia.

Attempts to become a government school have faced difficulties because the Ministry of Education can only upgrade a school after sending qualified teachers.

For Mwomboshi settlement, the Ministry has required us to build a house for a teacher before one is sent to the area.

The Village Management Committee and the PTA decided to renovate one of the community houses, but lacked finances to embark on the project.

Mwomboshi school.jpgHowever the Friends of Makeni in Holland intervened and funded the project in 2008. Here you can see the house in the process of renovations.

Our thanks to our Dutch friends for this wonderful support!

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I am told that on their recent visit, Gordon and Julia Lowes established a garden for the children at St Nicholas Village to grow their own food - or at least, to be able to grow some of it! Jacob reports...

They planted cabbage, cauliflower, melons, impwa, tomato, rape and okra. Most of the crops are growing well, although some appear to more popular than others!

Everyone is working enthusiastically on the garden and there are some plans for expansion to grow more, including maize production. Some land has been given for their use by the Agricultural department

Here you can see pictures of carrots, squash, impwa and tomatoes in early stages.

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I am happy to pass on the news that the new, three-classroom school building has now been completed, after about seven months, thanks to the financial support of our Dutch donors.

For some time we had been asked by the community to extend our school from 'basic' to 'high school', by the addition of grades 10, 11 and 12, as there is no provision for this level in our area. To do this we also needed to provide facilities for laboratory lessons for science classes, which are to be achieved by shared space with the electronics school.

Thank you to Jan and Truus Veldkamp, who are visiting Makeni at the moment, for these pictures!

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Welding project

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Thanks to donations from Saanich community, security at the orphanage was improved in June. Exterior grill doors have been fitted on several buildings.

Here are before and after pictures!

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tshirts image006.jpgJoe Silwenga reports:

Makeni Ecumenical Centre HIV/AIDS Prevention Project needed T-shirts for its HIV/AIDS Workplace awareness programme, which requires that all staff put on the T-shirt printed with an HIV/AIDS message every Friday.

We were privileged to receive a donation of 50 golf shirts from Mr Lindhorst, through the Friends of Makeni. They had a DUMECO logo on the left.  They were donated to the Centre just at the time when management was contemplating a cost-sharing arrangement with the staff for costs of buying T-shirts.

We printed on the golf shirts information on HIV/AIDS and as you can see from the pictures 50 members of staff received a golf shirt each.
 
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The donation was timely and was to put to use in the best way.  HIV/AIDS is real and we are not ashamed to talk about it openly. More donations in form of T-shirts or Golf Shirts are welcome!



MEC HIV/AIDS Prevention Project extends appreciation on behalf of all the members of staff to Mr Lindhorst, Dumeco and the Friends of Makeni for the wonderful donation to Makeni Ecumenical Centre. May God bless you.



Home-based care project

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Anke Warmerdam,
Marjanka Flamma, Ruud
Amerongen and  Loy
Ebbers visited the centre from Holland and worked with the home-based care project for four weeks in 2008.

They went with the team to our local compounds: Kanyama, John Laing, Linda and Chawama.

They also arranged for for 24 children from Linda to go on a special trip to Munda Wanga gardens, the first such trip of its kind for children under the home-based care project.

They also distributed clothes to children - always popular!

Thank you for your kindness!

There is a new web page for the home-based care project on the main website to mark the visit.
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We have now been in Hackleton, Northants for over seven years, and our home church is St John the Baptist, Piddington.

When my late father, Revd Pierre Dil, first visited us here, he sat next to somebody who seemed vaguely familiar.  "Aren't you Father Dil?", the person asked. As it turned out, he was.

"Andrew Knowles", the stranger said. Except of course, he was not a stranger, but an MEC volunteer from 1980 something...   How odd that my father should have come across the world to visit us and then sat next to a former volunteer at Makeni Centre! We didn't know he was here either.

St John the Baptist, Piddington, now regularly support us through annual donations, as does Andrew. We thank you....

I cheated a bit here. A few days ago there was snow, but it has now gone. It is however very cold... -2C or so.

DSCF2554.JPGA few Sundays ago we had a demonstration of cooking mealie meal, which was then sampled by all.  So, while support flows to Zambia (and Lesotho) from Piddington, a bit of African cooking has come to us too.




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