 We have already mentioned our need for a piece of freehold land together with a building program. This is becoming urgent as we have three years of our lease left, and our landlord wants to use the land after this time for his children to build their homes. We are hoping to receive some help with this project from generosity donations from the world. But it is a big adventure, and we need to raise money ourselves in order for them to consider matching it.
At present we have COSO’s souvenir shop at orphanage for 52 children between the ages of 2 and 17. Eight of these children are orphaned, 22 children have only one living parent who is unable for reasons of illness or extreme poverty to provide any care, and 27 of our children have parents who are also unable to care for them because of illness or grinding poverty. Life is very hard if a parent cannot find any form of paid work.
Each child eats three meals a day, which costs about $1.66 per child. In addition, we need to clothe them with both school uniforms and play clothes, providing shoes, mosquito nets. Now we have the mattresses for their beds. We must have medical and school supplies, detergent, soap, toothbrushes and toothpaste and of course we need petrol for the tuk-tuk that provides them to school and diesel for our generator, since we have no electricity on site. The generator is used only when absolutely necessary; it fires the computer, and we must constantly press “Save” in case the generator fails, as it frequently does. In the future we will provide solar panel power for every house including the office. It also provides some television viewing for the children when it is too dark to play outside. |
