We, along with Compass, who are assisting us, are just in the process of engaging a builder to build the initial phase of our project. Next week I will travel to Joburg to meet the builder and hopefully finalise plans. The first phase, unless a lot more money comes in quickly, will consist of two children’s houses, housing 6 children in each with a house mother, and our accommodation, plus a guard house and initial infrastructure.Building will take 4-5 months, we imagine from January cos everything seems to close down for a month or more over Christmas. So potentially we could be open around May time. The project is really needed. Some of the orphans are living in child headed households and many others are in desperate or abusive situations. In such an area of deep poverty nutrition is a big issue. One girl said recently the only time her or her siblings get meat is when they attend a funeral.

Aside from the Children’s village we are keeping busy by facilitating Life Skills teaching for 4 groups of 20 orphaned children. The favourite session so far was when the children were taught about planting vegetables and got given their own vegetables to plant. Two months later most of the children tell us they have harvested their spinach and are enjoying it and that the cabbage is coming on nicely. Unfortunately in a few cases the goats or chickens got there first!We are also trying to help Foster Parents access their grants. Some of them applied over 3 years ago for grants they are entitled to and desperately need, and yet have not been seen by a social worker. Mostly these people are desperately poor and as a result their kids are malnourished - some severely.

Recently a little boy, a friend of ours ended up in hospital with severe malnutrition. His problem was aggravated by disease, HIV and TB. The nurses did a good job in getting him to eat the right things and after 3 months desperately lonely in hospital with visits only from us and one aunt, he has now gone home. We are working closely with his aunt to try and ensure he gets the right nutrition and that he doesn’t get in the same state again. I think I can say without our help with food he probably would. And there are many more children like this more than we can afford to help. When he was in hospital there was a hand drawn graph on the wall stating how many children got admitted to that unit with malnutrition and how many died each month. In that small rural hospital, nearly every month a few children died of malnutrition. There would also be some not included in those figures who never got as far as the hospital. It makes it all the more disturbing that Foster Parents can wait over 3 years to access grants.

We are also trying to follow up local clinics about why some HIV positive patients are not being given opportunity to access life saving treatment. We know a few women who are now starting on treatment only because we interfered, when they should have automatically been offered it. In addition there is also the problem that there is much ignorance about HIV and its treatment and much shame and fear about coming forward still, so we are hoping to help facilitate a treatment awareness day at one of the local clinics.

Please continue to pray for us out here. Bartletts x x x