With all our new structures in place, we have been able to really concentrate on our services at the Caledonia Rose Centre this year.
The first big excitement when coming back to school in May was that Auntie Sarah came back to teach us sport. The children have learnt jumping, ball sports, colours and so many other things from Auntie Sarah who has joined us in our new sports area. She is very patient and is teaching all the children English as well as bringing into her sports lessons everything they are learning in the classroom. She is also teaching our volunteer teachers how to do the sports activities so that they can do them when she is not there. Thank you, Auntie Sarah, for all you do for us!
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| Auntie Sarah lines up children to start a hurdle relay |
Dorcas has seen the first programme at our skills development centre roll out in full swing! With thanks to The Child Resource Institute of Zimbabwe and with donations from Holly Hudson, Jess Stevens and Lee Sanderson, we were able to start our sewing project. The ladies from the community have made cushions for the skills development centre so that they have somewhere to sit when they come and learn and spend time at the centre. They have now started making cushions to sell and we hope to see some of these on sale at the Miracle Missions fair on Saturday. This will bring in some income to buy further materials so that we can teach more ladies how to sew.
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| Cushions for our skills development centre (and curtains make with extra fabric in the background!) |
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| Beautiful cushions to be sold for income generation for caregivers in the community |
Dorcas and Bianca have been looking after the children on the feeding programme so well. There are many more children in the community that need feeding and we are hoping to be able to expand the feeding programme from 200 to 400 by the end of the year. Dorcas also makes use of the packaging that the porridge comes in to make hats, aprons and clothes peg holders!
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Dorcas is so proud of her creations - all out of ePap bags!
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The clean water that we have been given access to by Amanzi using the funds raised by its 'Dollar-a-Dinner' campaign for our water project have meant that we can cook the food for our children and give them a drink of water without worrying about contamination and illness. Thank you, Amanzi, for giving us the opportunity to have a cool drink of clean water every day! The Amanzi water project has also allowed us to provide our children with flush toilets, a novelty in this community. The teachers have taken time to teach the children how to use these loos and they are now used to going to the loo on their own and even washing their hands after they have finished in the ablutions.
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| Smart new ablutions with our very own water tank to flush the loos |
We now have four programmes running at The Caledonia Rose Centre, namely ECD (early childhood development or preschool), a feeding programme, a skills development programme, parenting and we are hoping to start up our new health programme in the next month. We are looking for a nurse to come in and screen our children for any illnesses that we can help them with or to refer them to a clinic for those that we cannot. It has been so wonderful to see the health of our children improving with the nutrition that they are receiving but now we have to focus on those illnesses that we have not yet tackled! We will keep you update in the progress of this programme and look forward to sending more photos of happy children at school!
