|
Happy new year to all Bethany supporters, sorry to say no new photos this month from Bethany Tanzania. However, we do have some news and also lots of news from the UK team who have been working hard on the idea of Sponsorship for named children (see below)
First the news from Tanzania: Daniel Reports: “I am very glad to inform you that we are all fine and only few problems with Rehema Joseph who is bit not feeling very well. And Shaibu also is still having his eyes problem though I have taken him to a hospital in Mwanza three times.”
“Ntare has been the first and the leading person in his class, which is class three, and Lomadi has been the second person after Ntare in their exams for this holiday. The team has proposed along with the award policy to offer some gifts to these two top stars which will serve as a challenge and motivation to the rest of children and believing that they will be motivated to work very hard in schools next time. We are very proud to inform you some good news about Phabian that he has passed his primary exams to Sogesca Secondary School. He will be beginning his secondary studies in January 2006, but we do know the date yet. As you know that Mwita was in form three this year and before he goes into form four he had to do an examination to examine if he could pass for form four. Unfortunately the results are out but he has failed to go to form four. So this automatically means he has to recite the third year before he qualifies to go for the four year. And this means vividly that he will have to stay at Bulima for five years instead of four as it was before.
Evening Class at Bethany:
I introduced an evening class for about a month and a half now. This class starts right away after the evening prayer at 7:30 - 8:30 pm. The purpose of this class as I initially and personally thought is to help especially the primary children to be able to do better in their studies. This came into my mind because the primary children have not been doing very
well academically. I have been involving the old children and the care workers in the teaching.
The children who have been very helpful in teaching and who really need to be congratulated are: Fabian who has been teaching social studies; Emakulata has been teaching English and Lucas Mtaki has been teaching Mathematics. Also some of the care workers like Meshack, Ester, Martha and Yona have been involved in the whole work of teaching. Everything has been working ok and the children seem to gain a lot from this scheme.”
(the above quote taken from Daniel’s email unedited)
New children Winifrida Mathayo born on 10th of October 1997 has been admitted to Bethany, Her father died recently but her mother is alive but unable to look after her.
Clinic news: Our clinic closed in December. Events have overtaken our deliberations on the future of the clinic. It has for some time had ‘staff problems’ and the number using the clinic was declining especially in the afternoons. Fortunately other Tanzanian run clinics have opened in our area and so the villagers will still have somewhere to go for medical attention. We intend to visit these local clinics on our January visit to see if we can assist them in any way. We do however intend to continue to treat the (80+) Bethany children on site. Onesmo our team leader used to work as a lab technician and so he will still be able to carry out investigations (with our newly donated microscope) and we are considering employing a nurse part time. The good news out of all this is that we will be able to use the clinic for other things and are looking at converting it into a first aid room, a store room, a small library and three classrooms.
N.B. (Please note that this web site is accessible world wide and so we are very careful to only publish the bare facts as truthfully as possible. There are often circumstances upon which decisions have been made which we feel unable to publish. Please contact us directly if you need to know more)
Proposed New School: The conversion of our old clinic into three classrooms will be the start towards eventually providing full time education. If you are a teacher and would like to give up a year to teach English to our children then please contact us.
New Girls Dorm: We now have 39 girls in the new dorm as well as some of the smaller boys. We also have two full time female carers. You may have noticed a ‘wish list’ on our index page where we have mentioned that we need another ten bunk beds and more cabinets to finish the third and final wing. So far we have not had any response.
Crop growing: Daniel mentioned that Mr Matiku our project’s manager has started his plan of cultivating 5 acres of land to grow maize and beans during the present rainy season. So far the land has been prepared for planting but they are waiting for rain before planting the seeds. Will let you know how this progresses.
Return trip to England: No further progress. We are still looking for FREE or nearly free accommodation for up to 30 children (including 3 adults) for 6 weeks through September and into the first two weeks of October. If there is anyone out there who knows of, or who owns a very large house or hotel/guest house and would consider the possibility of us using it then please let us know. It would need to be around the Blackburn area. email here.
Monthly Supporters / Enquirers Meetings: I have arranged the dates for the next three meetings which are all on Saturdays and are: 4th Feb, 11th March and the 1st April, 2006. They are held at the Hope Centre, Ossy. 10am-noon. Everyone welcome. (click here for details)
Future trips -----------------------------
January Trip: This is now booked and members visiting are: Simon Earnshaw (dentist), David Duxbury (plumber), Joanna Pellet (youth leader), Daniel Hughes (youth worker) and Graham Pountain.
February- March Trip: Those booked: David Borland and Graham Pountain. Not too late to book! (email me if you want to go)
Easter trip: 8th to 21st April. There are two groups going, Group 1: Ian Kelly (joinery lecturer), Gary Nolan (joinery lecturer), John Brindle (joinery lecturer), Dave Thomas (plumbing lecturer) and Graham Pountain. Group two: Graham and Elaine Earnshaw, Rebecca Smith (administrator), Wendy Whitaker (teaching assistant) and Sarah Duerden (dental hygienist).
May June trip: Nothing yet booked (email me if you want to go)
July 2nd to 19th trip: Eddie Jeffery (UK team) is leading this trip and there is still time to book. Also David Borland (UK team) is hoping to go.
July 24th to August 8th trip. Youth groups from St. James, Clitheroe and Christ Church, Accrington are hoping to go on this trip.
No further trips are planned due to the possibility of some of the children visiting Sept - Oct.
Staff changes: Tanz team - none, UK team - none
____________________________________________________________________________
Sponsorship - Finance: You will see that we have, after much deliberation introduced a sponsorship scheme for individual children. We intend to write (this week) to all those who are already giving regularly to see if they want their future donations allocated to sponsorship or whether they are happy to continue to donate money for the ongoing development of Bethany.
If for some reason you fail to receive the letter please download a copy here
(click here for pdf format or click here for word doc format).
To those not yet making regular donations we hope you will consider sponsoring or
co-sponsoring one of our children. To learn more about sponsorship we have produced a 4 page Question and Answer sheet (click here).
Supporting Bethany
_____________________________________________________________________________
Money boxes: As you can see our total collected from the money boxes is over £1021. We have a few boxes yet to open and so the total will be more than this by the end of January.
Publicity cards: We still have the postcard size flyers (financed by separate sponsorship). These are now available and are ideal to give to everyone (e.g. school children, congregations etc etc.) They are ideal in the sense that they advertise the web site address and show some photos of our children. Please E-mail me with how many you would like and I will either post them or bring them to you. Click here to see the cards.
Pen pals group: Going from strength to strength
Click here to see the web site and apply to join.
Proposed work
1) Refurbishment of the old dormitory not yet started.
2) Provision of accommodation for volunteers (visiting and permanent) and staff. Not yet started
3) New School. As mentioned above we have plans to convert our clinic to provide 3 classrooms. We hope this will be the start with more classrooms to follow.
Live Link: It is now possible for us to arrange a phone link (prearranged) whereby the children at Bethany could answer questions (in English) over the phone from children in the UK. The cost of the phone call using a special prefix number is 15p per minute. This may be suitable for all sorts of groups. Please remember that only the older children can speak English and we would need to have the questions beforehand. The day and time would have to be prearranged. (We can arrange this only because recently mobile phone coverage has been extended to cover our area and the Bethany team now have cheap mobile phones). We had applied for a ‘land line’ over ten years ago and now with the advent of mobile phone coverage it is unlikely that provision of land lines other than in the cities will be pursued.
Satellite Internet: No further news
Photo Album: Click here for details.
Possible bore hole: No further news.
Mains Power: No news, no change. Still patiently waiting
OTHER NEWS
And Finally: Thank you so much for being interested enough in our work to be reading this. Even more if by your donation you have made this work possible.
|
