Happy New Year

Happy new year to everyone! We are so excited about 2019 and we hope you have had a blessed January.

Birthdays

Teacher Wongani: We would love to wish her a joyful day as she celebrates her birthday. It is always a joy to celebrate a life and we wish her more of God’s blessings and more happy returns.

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Purity

Our beautiful young lady turned 15 on the 20^th of January. We were so happy to celebrate this special day with her. Her brothers and sister were by her side helping her enjoy the celebration. We wish her many more years of love and happiness!

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General Welfare

Kwathu Home:

The month of January has been an exciting month for all the children as they entered into their new grades. Their termly academic results are out and they did very well in both their end of year test and National Exams.

Our four children who sat for their grade 7 National final examinations last year all qualified to go to their 8^th grades. They were among the highest scoring students from their school. Obet walked away with an amazing 764 points while Rosaria had 758, Purity had 745 and Austin got 721 out of 1000 marks. We are so proud of them and we really appreciate the contributions and efforts everyone invested in the children’s education. We indeed see a light at the end of the tunnel in their future.

Austin and Obet have since been taken to a boarding school while Rosaria and Purity have been taken to one of the best girls’ school within Livingstone.

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Kwathu Free Haven School:

The first 2019 academic term came to a start on the 14^th of January 2019. All the children were so excited to return to school and seemed so ready for the term. All of the children have graduated to a higher grade and this has brought about a lot of excitement. We recruited a new baby class as those who were in baby class are now in middle class. The total number of children learning at Kwathu Free Haven has now reached 240. The school is growing every year.

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*If you feel the Lord leading you to sponsor the school, please be in touch with us. We would love to hear from you.

New Family Member:

We are pleased to let you know that we have a new child in the home. He is a 2 year old boy and we are so glad to have him join our beautiful loving family. He has blended well with his sisters and brothers and seems to be having a great time hanging around with them.

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2019 Plans and Goals

We have held a number of meetings with the different departments within Kwathu in order for us to brain storm on different issues and design our work plans. So far the plans laid out are definitely going to lead us in the right direction.

As 2019 unfolds, we would like to intensify on our empowerment programs and self-sustainability projects.

Tailoring: The whole essence of the tailoring project is to empower the women from the communities through tailoring skills in order for them to earn an income to feed their families and pay school fees for their children. We plan to recruit a qualified tailor to train a number of community women in tailoring skills both in theory and practical at a reasonable and affordable fee and then award them with certificates after completion of the training. Furthermore, this will be an opportunity for us to design and sew school uniforms for our community school.

Farming: Talks are still going on in the bid to acquire farming land. Once we have the land, we will use it for the purpose of the organisation’s self-sustainability project. We wish to rear livestock and grow crops that will supplement the homes daily needs of vegetables and dairy products.

Home Visitation: It is important for us to know and understand the living conditions of the people we serve, this is why this year we intend to intensify our home visitations to the families of both the Kwathu children and the Kwathu community school kids. This will help us understand certain behaviors in children especially those who come from the community.

Feeding: The feeding program has been successful thus far, though with a bit of challenges here and there. The whole essence of the feeding program is to offer a meal to a child in order for them to concentrate in class. Most of their families cannot afford three meals a day, hence most of them report to school hungry, which makes it difficult for a child to concentrate on an empty stomach. We provide the children with both breakfast and lunch from Monday through to Friday. This year, the number has risen from 220 children to slightly above 240 due to the recruitment of the baby class.

Youth Ministry: The Youth Ministry is the newest project of the Kwathu Ministries. The core objectives of this ministry is to empower youth with life skills through different activities. We will have occasional camp meetings to talk about sexuality with girls and boys and other important aspects of life.

The program is led by Mr. Peter Hamweene who recently returned from South Africa where he was attending an 8 month leadership training. Youth Ministry was part of Peter’s training during his time in South Africa and he felt the Lord lead him to sew back into the community.

Mama Jeanette: 5 months have passed since Jeanette Phiri left Zambia. This does not mean she is no longer part of us. Mama Jeanette is actually working full time with Kwathu Ministries from abroad. We are so glad that her and her children have adjusted to the new life in her home country, Germany. On the 1st of January 2019, she became a full member with the NGO in Germany that supports Kwathu Ministries. Jeanette will support and help the team from the European side to further develop Kwathu Ministries.

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Support

Home Groceries: We are so grateful to our partners for their continued support towards the daily needs of the home. We did our shopping and most of the supplies are going to see us through till the end of March.

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Volunteers: We are inviting all those that would like to volunteer at Kwathu Ministries this year to get in touch with us via our email kwathuoffice@gmail.com. We encourage mission teams to come visit. We have enough accommodation to cater for teams.