Child sponsorship letter from Blantyre, Malawi

An example child sponsorship letter from Blantyre, Malawi:

Dear Sponsor,

We now have 108 children (with our most recent children joining us in March) at SOS Children's Village Blantyre.  We also helped train 8 potential resident aunts who did their practical trainings with us. With so many new children with us now remedial lessons are very busy as are the counseling sessions and supervised studies for those children in Std 3 to 7 in our primary school. The children love playing football, mainly the boys and the girls are dedicated to netball. We played matches during all the past few months, but are yet to climb to No. 1.

For those children who performed outstandingly well at school, motivational trips visited St John Ambulance in Blantyre and after that, they were taken to see the city and ended up at an ice cream parlour where everybody enjoyed a cone. Some mums too took their children who did well in their exams, out to lunch in the city. During this period mums were involved in teaching their children how to prepare bed for growing vegetables. Harvest season is finally over which found many of our children helping their mums harvest the maize and carry it on home to bag it up.

We have had a good and fulfilling past 6 months. The new children are coping well and are adjusting to the life of SOS Children‘s Village in Blantyre.

Family Strengthening Programme

Our programmes focus on those child and granny headed household and vulnerable children and families. We hope to make an impact that will alleviate household burdens and thus decrease the growing number of orphans in Malawi. We have had a busy schedule during the last 6 months with the Family Development Plans conducting interviews with family caregivers, children and Community Based Organisations (CBO) to establish their plans up to 2013. So far 442 caregivers and 1455 children have expressed their vision and plans up to 2013 from 26 family interest groups in 6 villages.

A total of 26 bicycles were distributed to 26 family development facilitators (as well as T-shirts) to ensure they can meet impoverished households that need support so that we were able to train CBO members in management of their activities.

SOS Nursery

With now 85 children on board, the nursery is bubbly and full of activity all day long. We have 9 children from the Family Strengthening Programme who have made our realignment process visible. Two more new children from the SOS Village also joined us recently. We are trying to adapt to the new Government school calendar! Early this year there was a water shortage which slowed down our activities somewhat, but things soon normalized and we are back on track again.

SOS Primary School

At the beginning of the academic year we warmly welcomed those children who graduated from the SOS Nursery as well as from the SOS Village and from the community. We now have an enrollment of 323 students which include those from the Special Needs Class. Our year started in December. Some teachers attended workshops covering the new curriculum, Culture & Art and Management. We continued to hold classes during the school holidays to ensure that all work was covered, so the students only had 1 week of holiday. Our second term opened in March this year when we celebrated World Women’s Day. During March we also had the Ministry of Education supervisors visit us when we were commended for the hard work that we are doing.

We would like to thank all our valued sponsors for their generosity and care they have shown our Village. Without your support we could not help these vulnerable and orphaned children of Malawi.

Thank You!!!!! 

SOS Children's Village Blantyre