Welcome to our weekly news roundup! Here we share stories from each of our Villages about our Programs, celebrations, children, and staff. If you’d like to receive these updates via email, please subscribe to our newsletter.
Mwanza: Occupational Therapy
At VOH Mwanza we are very thankful to be hosting Rosemary, an Occupational Therapist from South Africa. She comes to us from the Chaeli Campaign and we’re very grateful to have her here. Rosemary is working with our children with disabilities and their caregivers to help us improve care and do the very best we can to help all our children reach their absolute full potential. It’s been a great time for everyone so far and we are already learning lots!
Burundi: Listening to our Children
VOH Burundi is committed to listening to our children when they have something to share with us. Sometimes, they have some confusion or issues they want to express. We commit ourselves to making sure every child is and feels loved and secure.
Our children are encouraged to express their ideas, thoughts, dreams, successes, challenges, fears, and joys. They receive individual counselling and advice, and encouragement that is so important for their self-esteem to be built and strong.
We are convinced that listening to a child is one of the best ways to show him/her love and care.
Chongwe: Expanding our Preschool Program!
At VOH Chongwe we are so grateful that we have been able to continue to grow our numbers, bringing hope to more child in need. This year we added 60 new preschool children, some participated in our off-site feeding program but were previously too young to start school.
Many of the guardians and parents of these children earn their living crushing stones. They sit on the side of the road and use large rocks and tools to break big slates of stone into smaller pieces that can be used for construction and landscaping.
The guardians and parents are so thankful that we are helping them in the care of their children, providing the necessities of life that they could not afford to provide on their own. The children are extremely happy to be in class and are already enjoying school!
We want to thank those who donated to this project at our Evenings of Hope and for Giving Tuesday–your generosity made this expansion possible!
Kitwe: Motivational Speaker!
This week VOH Kitwe welcomed a motivational speaker who came to talk to our grades 9, 10, 11 and 12 students. The students were encouraged to work extra hard and to be focused in their daily lives.
The trend is that there is a lot of peer pressure out in the communities amongst the teens and youth that is causing some of them to indulge in activities that are not helpful for them. There are many teenage pregnancies and struggles with alcoholism in the neighbouring community, if not avoided these can cause students to have to drop out of school.
The talk was inspiring to our children, encouraging them to be focused in life and decide what they want to do with their future.
The speaker also made a donation of exercise books to the school!
Malawi: Meet Martha and Mwaiwawo
Meet Martha and Mwaiwawo, who attend VOH Malawi’s preschool program in Kauma. Martha and Mwaiwawo’s dad passed away the same year that Martha was born leaving her mother to care for both Martha and her brother. Mwaiwawo was enrolled at VOH Malawi in 2016 and his sister Martha was enrolled in August 2017. They have both been steadily improving in so many ways! Here they are with their mum who is so proud of their progress.
Mongu: Meet the Twins!
We believe that each child is valuable to God and, therefore, they are valuable to us. For this reason, we run a feeding program for the very malnourished and vulnerable in our community. It is also an empowerment program for the caregivers of these children and we value the time we have with them to train them in running a small business. At the moment, we have 29 children in our feeding program at the Save A Life Center. Among those children, we are so blessed to have two sets of twins and we absolutely love seeing them already grow in just the few weeks they’ve been with us. Gift and Isaac and Rebeccah and Maliti have very quickly made a place in our hearts and we are so excited to see what their futures hold.
Don’t forget to follow us on social media for more stories and pictures: