’MAY,JUNE & JULY KWATHU UPDATE 2016’’
THE BEST WAY TO PROTECT CHILDREN IS TO EMPOWER THEM TO PROTECT THEMSELVES!
It’s always with joy to see our children really improve in their school work and bringing home heart-warming results. Our Children reopened schools on 9 May and their report cards where very impressive, this shows that they are actually improving and there is positive change and hope for a better future.
A skills program has been made available for our Children in lower primary. They have been consistently attending and undergoing an Arts therapy at Creative Academy within Livingstone. The main ideal of all this, is to help our Children learn more about colors relating to human personalities and of course improve arts skills as most of our Children have such interest in Art and drawings.
SUPPORT
We continue to extend our heartfelt gratitude to our partners and friends who have been so faithful in helping us caring for our Children. Without this support it would have not been possible for us to provide the best Child Care.
On 2 June, we welcomed the Grace Klein team all the way from Alabama USA, who were on a ten day mission trip to serve at our facility. Upon their arrival, the team was welcomed by Kwathu directors Mr. and Mrs. Agripa Phiri at the Livingstone International Airport. The team was once again welcomed and received well by our children and house Mothers. Later on, we had an awesome family time and we enjoyed some cookies served with coffee and tea. Our Children were so happy and excited as they received their lovely gift. The team blessed the Home with assorted items such as bathing soap, cutlery, and kid’s games just to mention a few.
It’s of great Joy to see how the local community is also getting involved and being a blessing to our children. Our little Girls were blessed with cute dresses from HAPPY AFRICA. The Babies were so excited and bathing time on this day was not a problem because the babies were looking forward to wearing their beautiful new dresses. “The joy of being a child”.
Further on, Grace Ministries is a church located within our local catchment area. The women’s ministry from this church blessed us with assorted groceries and food items.
The Bible clearly states, ‘blessed is the hand that gives’. We so hope that many can get involved in the practice of sharing the little they have in Love, Care and Support. We are grateful and thankful. May the good Lord Bless you for any blessing in kind you give to this home..!
SOCIAL
Kwathu Birthdays are always very special, because they bring the children together and the love shown to each other is amazing. Obet had his 10th birthday on 3rd May and to add icing to the May month, his elder brother Francis turned 16 on 05 May. The birthday celebration for our two boys was on 06 May. We all had a wonderful and great family time and we had some good music played for our entertainment. Besides, not only did they get their birthday presents, they were later taken out for Pizza in town and they really loved it.
On 7 June, we had such a delightful moment with our visiting friends and partners Grace Klein team. We had two surprise birthday parties for Grace who was from the visiting team and Peter who is one of our oldest sons in the house, a very hardworking and committed young man. Grace celebrated her 12th birthday as her first birthday ever in Zambia. The celebration was characterised of nice yummy food and prior to the celebration the team had some quality time out at the Victoria Falls. This was very special and most memorable day especially for her.
Peter and Linto had their birthdays on 25 June. However, since peter is currently in boarding school Mama Jeanette and a few older Children had travelled to pay them a visit and surprised him with a lovely birthday cake. He was very happy and excited especially that he was not expecting the surprise visit.
Whereas with Linto’s celebration it was quite unique from most birthdays he’s been celebrating at Kwathu. The cake was baked for him by his elder Sister Gertrude and he was later taken out with one of his best friends in the house Linto. Firstly, he toured the crocodile farm, went to Maramba river lodge and finally had a stop by food palace were he enjoyed his lunch. Having an opportunity to celebrate their birthdays at Home is a blessing.
Willard turned 14 years on 3 July and his birthday was celebrated on 8 July. The global challenge team were part of this celebration and the house mamas prepared everything for the occasion and all the Children had great time.
On 21 July, we were blessed by four volunteers; Lisa, Louise, Kaila and Caryson from the local guesthouse Sunbird who took our young children for a day trip to Victoria Falls. The children had such a fun day, as it is not quite dry season the falls were full of water and it was an amazing sight for the children to see. They also admired monkeys along the way all while being kept safe by our volunteers! On the way home the volunteers ensured the taxi drivers went home via the Royal Livingstone hotel where the children admired Zebras from within the taxi, this is great for the children to see. They were later treated to Hungry Lion chips and ice cream. The children had a great day and were almost straight to sleep upon arriving home, sleepy but happy.
“UNITED WE STAND DIVIDED WE FALL”
We need all hands to help develop and grow a nation. Kwathu is also participating in taking care of the community in it`s own little way. The feeding program is Kwathu’s external effort to reach out to the community with an emphasis on the children under 15years. Not only do we feed the community children but we also take time to encourage and reaching, the community Children and Mothers with the word of God.
This time around Children from the community were blessed with assorted clothing and the Children were so happy. The Community Art Club has been on-going and it’s getting more fun and interesting, since we have extended the participation of Children from SOS village. The community Children had so much fun as they interacted with our visiting team.
July was another successful month for our feeding program. Thankfully God has continued to bless us with the funds to carry on this program, and we pray that this blessing continues so we can continue to help our community. Thank you Kingdom Ventures for making this possible, approximately we fed about 130 Children and 15 adults from our community. Annually, we are expected to feed about 1,600 children. This is a large proportion of the community we are able to help and we are so thankful. Many thanks to volunteers from the local guesthouse sunbird for attending our program and helping out.
Further on, as a way of enhancing our Children’s involvement in community participation, our Children visited the Livingstone Maramba old people’s home. During their visit our Children mainly spent their time playing different games with the old and had some good time of interaction. The Children had so much to learn. There is a saying which goes, “what an old person sees while seated, a young person will not see even when they climb a tall tree.”
JOYFUL SERVICE
We have continued receiving and welcoming Volunteers from different parts of the world who freely offer the service of helping to develop and improve the well-being of our Home. During feeding program, we have different volunteers who find joy in helping with food preparation and dishing of food to the community children, making work of the mamas and the children much easier. Besides, few of our volunteers find more fun in helping and taking part in the community Arts club and helping out our house Mothers with bathing the little ones.
During the month of June, it was so wonderful having hosted, the Grace Klein team and our two Germany volunteers who are working with our Germany Partners “Tandeka”, whom for the first time took part in community feeding program and Arts club .They really had an awesome African experience.
In the course of July, The Global Challenge team took some time to assist with our feeding programs and spread the word of God with our children and community. Thank you so much Global Challenge
Sadly we had two of our Volunteers who have been working with Kwathu for some time; Febienne from Switzerland and Josephine from Sweden. These two ladies will be greatly missed of their love and passion for imparting the skills of musical instruments specifically the guitar and keyboard. Some of our Children can now play and still perfecting their guitar and keyboard skills.
All in all, many thanks to all our volunteers and to those who feel they want to come back and serve at Kwathu again, you are more than welcome. Thanks again to all SunBird volunteers who help out to serve the children on our Monday feeding program.
BUILDING
Kwathu as a growing institution has been expanding at an amazing pace. Kwathu has now a functioning administration block with 2 offices, meeting hall, tea room, two toilets, reception, storeroom and a carport/garage. With this in place, we have now created more room for 6 extra children to be admitted in the home.
On 2nd to 12th June, our partners Grace Klein community sent a team to work on the office block. The team cleaned the floors, scrubbed the walls and dusted them. They also painted undercoat/primer inside the admin block and painted the final coat to all inside walls. They also tiled the floor, painted the ceiling and fitted the main front door. The team finally commissioned the administration block with Mr. Agripa Phiri and Jason as ministry leaders cutting the ribbon.
In addition, we were blessed by another team from South Africa under Global Challenge. They mainly assisted with the building of Kwathu’s administration block. They were a fairly large team and the manpower was a tremendous help and they made significant progress! Among other things they did were to assist with our feeding programs and spread the word of God with our children and community. Thank you so much Global Challenge.
Community School
The community school is also a project moving fine and incredibly fast. Resources are coming in at a steady rate. Most of the major works have been done on the school. We are on the final stage of working on reviews, plastering, flooring, window seals and air vents. In the course of July we had a team from America facilitated by Samantha who mainly took time to paint the school.
Please continue praying with us on these
- Pray with us for financial resources to help us accomplish our current building project, which is our staff/Volunteer house.
- Pray for provision of funds for the Feeding Program God has laid upon our hearts to feed poor children around us
- Continue praying for courage, faith, wisdom and mostly love that we can accomplish the goals we set for Kwathu and that the children can live, grow and mature in Gods daily goodness and loving kindness.
- Pray for our weakened Zambian economy. The poor are feeling the pinch in all this and it’s hard for us to budget for the home as commodity prices increase every day.
- We thank you all for your continued love and support towards Kwathu Children’s Home and may the Lord continue to bless you! Matthew 18:5 “And whosoever shall receive one such little child in my name, receives me”.
- We thank all our friends and partners for your prayers, donation and support of any kind to Kwathu. GOD BLESS.
- We finally thank our volunteers for selflessly giving their precious time to help our children and staff.
