New total 92,990.
Got a bit of a surprise when sorting the underwear this month as found a beautiful ring in a velvet box in amongst a bag of donated underwear – trying to find the owner but nobody has come forward so far. The problem might be that they don’t know it’s missing, if you know of anyone that has had a clear out in the last month could you perhaps say to them? Thank you.
As you may know the May and June lottery is for the pilot group only, I just want to make sure everything runs smoothly ahead of the “full” lottery in July. Thank you to everyone who has emailed me to join the “full” lottery. I will be emailing you in the next 1-2 weeks with all the information you need for 1 July ie your unique reference number which you need to set your standing order up. There are still places available so if you are interested please email maria@smallsforall.org or if you know of anyone who might be interested in the lottery then please let them know. £5 a month for the chance to win £500 – places limited to 200!
Many of you know that I’m just back from Malawi where I spent a few days with Linda, founder of Malawi Underprivileged Mothers (MUMs) and Barbara, a trustee of MUMs. MUMs has been working in Malawi for the last 10 years and it was great to visit the 3 villages that MUMs supports with an education and feeding programme for 2-5 year olds. We sat in on a class in one of the villages, Malili, and it was wonderful watching how much the young children just love to learn. I was particularly impressed when they had numbers faced down and had to find the numbers in order 1-10 and write on the board. They also had to find the animals and part of the body (in English) and again they were all just so eager to take part. After lessons the children are fed porridge, and given this is their first meal of the day at around 11am they just sat so patiently waiting. They were all so well behaved during lessons and waiting on their porridge.
We also visited the Mother Teresa orphanage, Charity’s clinic in Area 23, the 500 miles clinic and paid a visit to the fistula clinic. Listening to Linda and Barbara they have seen so much positive change over the last few years, however what was very upsetting was a visit to the nursery at Bwaila hospital and seeing so many tiny, sick little babies. Maternal and infant death happens far too often here and I’m full of admiration for the nurses and midwives that deal with preventable deaths every week.
Travel “blips” aside (2 flights cancelled, missing baggage, 12 hour delays) we managed to achieve everything we set out to do, and got the pants to the 3 villages (Malili, Kuthanga and Makanga), the children at the Mother Teresa orphanage and the gentlemen at the 500 miles clinic. If you would like to see some photographs from the trip I will be updating Flickr in the next day or so.