Kid’s Club for Orphans
Empower Tanzania is partnered with the Des Moines Rotary Club to provide an educational program for vulnerable children in the villlage of Mramba, Tanzania. The $3,000 budget established a weekly program of education in life skills for 50 children in the village, and St. John’s Lutheran Church in Des Moines provides continuing funding to maintain the program.
The project includes: Training for three people in the village in child development skills, Saturday morning programs in life skills for 50 vulnerable children,
Games and educational programs on hygiene, care of animals and nutrition.
Breakfast and lunch are served.
This seems like such a simple agenda, and yet, the recent visit to Tanzania by ETI Board Members, including Project Chair Carol Fisher showed that the impact is ANYTHING but simple. In fact, the word “amazing” comes to mind!
In one short year, this pilot program has taken 50 children who were hungry, struggling to survive, not going to school, and in most cases dealing with the death or eminent death of one or both parents from HIV/AIDS….to a place of HOPE!
The children have uniforms, allowing them to go to school. They are gardening, eating the “fruits of their labor”, so to speak, in their own homes and at school. They are getting support in learning those life skills that mean survival in this harsh environment, and best of all, they are outgrowing their clothes! We can’t think of a better measure of success than that!
A big thanks goes out to the Rotary Club of Des Moines for the initial investment, the people of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Des Moines for their willingness to open their hearts AND pocketbooks to sponsor the children and purchase school uniforms, the Pare Diocese of the Evengelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania for their ongoing support of the program, and of course, the teachers and people of Mramba who are doing to “heavy lifting” every week to raise up these children. None of this is possible unless a lot of people get together and decide to make it possible.
The vision of this project is to begin sponsoring some of these vulnerable children in their formal education, and increase the size of the program to include five more locations in 2012. If you belong to an organization that might want to sponsor a new Kid’s Club in 2012, contact project manager Carol Fisher at cfisher@empowertz.org.
Your financial support will help! Please give generously!