{"id":753,"date":"2002-10-31T19:26:15","date_gmt":"2002-10-31T18:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/makeni.org.uk\/wordpress\/?p=753"},"modified":"2011-06-11T07:48:55","modified_gmt":"2011-06-11T06:48:55","slug":"orphanage-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/makeni.org.uk\/wordpress\/2002\/10\/orphanage-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Orphanage news"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/makeni.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/gloria_chisenga-b.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-758\" title=\"Gloria\" src=\"http:\/\/makeni.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/gloria_chisenga-b-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>A report by the orphanage staff and Mrs Catherine Oreta<\/p>\n<p>Jan and Truus Veldkamp recently funded  the improvement of the play park, which they also originally set up.  This is a heavily used and much enjoyed facility for all children who  spend time at the centre.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, Jan and Truus have  purchased a music centre for the orphanage and a television. Together  with a donated video recorder the children now have a good range of  entertainment facilities. Access is rationed!<\/p>\n<p>The nearly 40 children in the Village are growing up very fast and they are doing generally very well.<\/p>\n<p>The children are doing very well in school, Esther Chisenga was again top of her class.<\/p>\n<p>We are very happy we bought a big new pot and new washing line on which we can hang all our washing.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/makeni.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/beauty3.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-759\" title=\"Chipo\" src=\"http:\/\/makeni.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/beauty3-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>We  had, as has now become usual, a party on St Nicholas Day.  It was a  very happy occasion with the children singing Zambian\/Dutch St Nicholas  songs at the tops of their voices!<\/p>\n<p>A friend of Makeni Ecumenical  Centre, Mrs. Dodd, offered to make all the preparations for Christmas  presents for each child this last Christmas. Children of members of  staff living within the Centre were also invited to the Christmas Party.   House mother, Mrs Passmore, was Mother Christmas. She was also asked  to be Mother Christmas at the end of the year parties for the whole  primary school!<\/p>\n<p>A positive development in this project is the  introduction of the HEPS ( High Energy Protein Supply) food supplements.   We approached an agency,  Project Concern International, for HEPS and  soya cooking oil donations and we are happy to report that these are now  being received regularly. The Orphanage staff were taught how to  prepare the food. The children are now eating the soya porridge every  morning instead of mealie meal porridge. Happily, there will be a  constant supply of HEPS, soya cooking oil and maize grain or whole wheat  from now on. The expenditure for food has gone down considerably and  the children&#8217;s health has improved a lot.<\/p>\n<p>Closely connected with  the orphanage is the Home Based Project, supporting orphans outside of  the centre.  We support 12 children with school fees, 4 at Secondary  School and 8 at Primary School. We also supply a bag of mealie meal  every month to 8 families. The requests for support are very high.<\/p>\n<h3>AAA Support<\/h3>\n<p>We have received another donation of CS$2000  from the Afirica AIDS angel project in Victoria, including a private  donation of CCS$500 by a recently unemployed couple, which will partly  go towards the orphanage and partly towards other deserving MEC projects  in the fight against AIDS.  We are very grateful to our friends in  Canada for their continued and generous support.<\/p>\n<p>Other friends  recently sent a number of boxes with gifts, including teddy bears for  the children.  The Housemother, Judy Passmore, reported:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe  children were delighted with them and would not be parted from them.  They slept with them. The next morning when I came to the Home, I found  all the children clinging to their teddies. We have not yet decided to  whom to give the rest of the teddies in the community. Say thank you  also to your group \u2018AIDS Angels of Africa\u2019 for all the good and hard  work and the money that they donated. Your ladies and donors are great.  All the clothes are nice to wear &#8211; skirts, T-shirts, trousers, dresses,  warm clothes and then football shirts. We all, even me, put on a  football jersey. Thank you also for the medicines! You are so good. May  you continue to work for what is good. Giving is a gift from God. Read,  Roman&#8217;s 12: 6-8, Acts 22: 3-7, Corinthians 9:6 and Galatians 6:10. Thank  you also for the toys and books I pray that our wonderful God will  continue blessing you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The children themselves wrote:<\/p>\n<p>Greetings  in the wonderful name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. We hope God  is richly blessing you. Here we are all fine. We children of St  Nicholas Orphanage would like to express our hearty felt gratitude to  you for the various gifts such as clothes, teddies, books, toys and many  more that we received. Each one of is really overwhelmed by these  special gifts. We even took photographs while having them unpacked from  the boxes and receiving them per child. The toys are beautiful and very  colourful. We have never seen so many toys in our lives. What can we  say? The young boys, Maybin and Christopher, played and played with the  cars. They could not even put them down. We have already been told by  ambuya and the aunties not to leave toys all over the place but to put  them back in boxes. The girls also had some soccer jerseys given to  them. We shall use them when playing other games like net ball.  Yours  Sincerely, Bertha Kabwe, on behalf of my brothers and sisters in Christ  at St Nicholas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A report by the orphanage staff and Mrs Catherine Oreta Jan and Truus Veldkamp recently funded the improvement of the play park, which they also originally set up. This is a heavily used and much enjoyed facility for all children &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/makeni.org.uk\/wordpress\/2002\/10\/orphanage-news\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22,17],"tags":[32,76,27],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/makeni.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/makeni.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/makeni.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/makeni.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/makeni.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=753"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/makeni.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":814,"href":"http:\/\/makeni.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions\/814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/makeni.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/makeni.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/makeni.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}