CHILDREN OF AFRICA

50 kids. In summer 2007, a blog for the orphanage was created and it allowed to bring more volunteers to the orphanage that would spend their fundraised money directly in the most impending projects.

 

In summer 2008, along with Giulia, Pino, Enrica and Dario (from Italy), we bought 100 chicks to breed, food, a tone of charcoal, more mattrasses, school uniforms, and we started to support several projects in the rural village of Tsunza, where we took photos of 25 kids who weren’t able to go to school, to see if we could find them a sponsor. We also started building three new classrooms in Timbwani Primary School (Likoni) but we couldn’t finish them that year. Instead we made it to build 6 wood benches for the orphanage dining-room, we helped re-build the floors of five classrooms in the school and we had some teachers seminars about teaching methodologies.

 

Between December 2008 and January 2009 we had already found sponsors for the 25 kids in Tsunza, so we bought all the school materials they needed in order to go to school. With Giulia’s help (900 euros), we also helped plant a vegetable garden next to the orphanage with sprinklers and nursery bed included. But the most amazing things were achieved in summer 2009, when we got about 10 volunteers going to Kenya after visiting our blog. Each one of them fundraised between 500 and 1000 euros that got invested in the most urgent projects by themselves with their own hands. Altogether they made it t help with:

 

• New school uniforms and shoes for everybody at the orphanage

• Renew mattrasses and beds

• Buy food and water

• Fix many broken pieces of furniture

• Pay for one year electricity (1000 euros)

• Paint the whole orphanage

• Sponsor and bring Habel to Medicine College

• Pay for Dinnah’s college exams

• Build two cooking chimneys

• Pay for many secondary school fees

• Open a vegetables stall for one of the workers at the orphanage

• And finish building the first classroom at Timbwani School

 

In 2010, our Google group had already more than 100 members between volunteers, sponsors and well-wishers, and it was then when we decided to get associated so that we could have access to more help and official subventions.

Therefore, in February 2010 Children of Africa Volunteers Association was born. It was first registered in Barcelona and then transferred to Figueres (Girona), with a Directive Board composed by Susanna Gómez Solé as the president, William Bemaronda as the secretary and Maria Delgado Pujolàs as the treasurer. In 2011, Lidia Belascoain joined us, by getting in charge of the sponsorships department, and in 2012 Pablo Idoate also joined to give a hand on that. 

 

We all know that the more sophisticated the projects are, the more sophisticated burocracy must become. However, our main objectives are based on action before burocracy. It is for this reason that we do not spend much time looking for members, but instead, we work our fingers to the bone in order to find sponsors for more kids to go to school; we prefer to invest our efforts in the organisation of fundraising events, making handcrafts for donations, going to markets, creating calendars, etc. 

 

In summer 2010, 16 volunteers engaged on a new journey to Kenya in order to start the first volunteers workcamp in the rural village of Tsunza and it was very successful. The volunteers were able to help build the first library in the region, a sanitary block with showers and latrines, to bring a doctor that examined, diagnosed and gave free medicine to more that 140 people in a day, to distribuite school materials for 65 sponsored kids, to organise AIDS prevention awareness workshops, speeches about education, health, hygiene, entertain the kids every day, buy 14 beds and mattrasses, a chart, food, bring a baby with HIV to hospital for one month, finish the two remaining classrooms at Timbwani School and many more things.

 

Children of Africa Organisation had just begun...