2024 NEWS
INTERNATIONAL NEEDS, BURKINA FASO
We support Justin Sankara and Luc Roger Sanou who are in Year 7. They have fled their homes in their war-torn country and are flourishing at their new school where they are boarders. They have settled down at school and write regularly to TWOAT to tell us of their progress and their lives and family. We are also currently contributing to a group programme which supports children with an education, meals, uniform, but more importantly the support they need after experiencing harrowing events in their young lives. Our funding also helps children from the villages to learn skills in subsistence and carpentry, skills that they are otherwise not having an opportunity to learn due to leaving their homes behind.
SEURR SANG’HIDA TRUST – ENTASOPIA PRIMARY SCHOOL, NKURUMAN, KENYA
The disabled in the village community have been helped again by our financial support. The children receive special education and wheel chairs etc. to help them in their daily lives. A group of friends of the project from Walton were able to visit in January and they were very encouraged by what they saw was being achieved and what exciting plans they were making for the future.
BREAD, BEREGA, TANZANIA
During a meeting with the UK doctor, who is our contact with the project, when we analysed the monthly reports we identified a serious problem with the new system whereby our clinician and a doctor now visit outlying village on a monthly basis. Whilst the epilepsy sufferers no longer have to travel up to 60 miles to the hospital, if they miss seeing the clinician, then they do not get their supply of medication for the next month. Continuity of medication is critical for epilepsy suffers – TWOAT volunteered extra funds from our Appeal so that each remote patient could be issued with 1 month’s extra stock to cater for these situations.
FISH EAGLE (SUBUTINI) SCHOOL, TANZANIA
Subutuni is a school in northeast Tanzania and provides education to children in the village of Subutuni who prior to the building of the school, did not have access to an education. TWOAT provides basic building materials such as wood, roofing and nails and in the past 6 years has seen the construction of the building from the ground up with labour provided by local men and the children who are encouraged to help with simple jobs such as sanding down desks and cleaning up all the time learning basic skills that will be needed in later life. Our contact, Steve purchases the materials, helps with the building and oversees the project and keeps in regular contact with us.
MTANDIKA TRADE SCHOOL, TANZANIA
We continue to get excellent feedback from our contacts and have been able to give the trade school extra support this year as a result of our recurring payment appeal to get the new Hotel and Management course off the ground. We have paid for resources and agreed to sponsor the new teacher and two students for a year at least. We have also provided equipment for the electrical engineering students and contributed towards repairs to the toilet block and a solar pump to get water from the river.
CALCUTTA CATHEDRAL RELIEF SERVICE (CRS), INDIA
TWOAT support to CRS helps the poorest in Calcutta’s slums through education, and weekend schools for children who need to work during the week to support their families. A worthwhile project currently taking place is sewing uniforms for children. Uniforms remove external signs of difference and the women sewing them have been trained in the skill by CRS. A recent women’s empowerment programme enables women who might otherwise be forced to work far from home or turn to prostitution, the skill to earn a respectable living. It will make a profound difference to their lives.
EMMANUEL SCHOOL, THAI BORDER WITH MYANMAR (BURMA)
The recurring payment appeal has enabled us to increase our regular support for feeding the children to £6k per year. The school has had problems with the latest flow of refugees from Myanmar government bombing as older children have received little or no schooling. These children have to start in lower age group classes which has cost extra money in books and equipment – we sent £1k to help with these costs.
NEPALESE SCHOOL TEACHERS, KERUNG, NEPAL (in the foothills of Mt Everest)
The school in the foothills of Everest is running well with many happy children and teachers. Our Sherpa contact has found work now that tourists are returning to the area. We are funding two teachers.
AMBONDROMIFEHY LITTLE SAPPHIRES SCHOOL, MADAGASCAR
The tiny nursery school that TWOAT has funded in northern Madagascar since it opened in 2011 had grown from 28 children then, to 40 in the school year 2022-23, by which time it was accommodating not only nursery but also the first 4 years of primary education. Primary teaching had been added at the request of parents who were very pleased with the care and teaching their young children were receiving at Les Petits Saphirs School. The reputation of Les Petits Saphirs spread within the mining village of Ambondromifehy and the number of children taught in 2023-24 jumped to 76. By great good fortune this coincided with our good friends at St Peter’s Church in Walton committing to bolster TWOAT’s support for Les Petits Saphirs by a regular £2,000pa. Both TWOAT and the school are very grateful. Now, at the start of the 2024-25 school year, enrolment has doubled again to 161. The Mothers’ Union in Madagascar, which runs the school, is hiring another teacher, is organising more furniture and equipment and is adding new classrooms. TWOAT is helping them to revise their budget to cope with the sudden increase in the valuable work they doing to enable the young children of this poor mining area to grow and develop.
FRIENDS OF LUDHIANA SCHOOL, INDIA
F of L provides healthcare to people who are underprivileged and have little access to medicine. TWOAT supports a number of projects through F of L such as a rural health outreach programme which takes doctors to villagers in rural areas, as well as emergency relief in other parts of the Punjab. TWOAT sponsors students who train as nurses, many who return as qualified nurses to work in the hospital in Ludhiana.
PAPUA PARTNERS, WEST PAPUA
West Papua is also one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse places in the world – with over 250 ethnically diverse groups who speak over 280 languages and dialects. This is out of a population of just over half a million people. The land comprises a large mountainous interior; forest lowlands and areas of coastal mangrove swamps. The Indigenous people are becoming a minority in their own land. Their calls for liberation and self-determination are being met with excessive violence and repression.
Papua Partners works with a network of local indigenous groups to bring sustained transformational changes to the lives of the people. We pay the salary of Yepina who involved in health and stopping violence against women. This year we had enough extra funds to support a business programme for women who are displaced from their communities due to conflict.
RAINBOW AFRICA, ZAMBIA
Livingstone, Zambia is struggling with many challenges, including inflation and the lack of power. They have a maximum of four hours power a day. We have been sponsoring three children at their excellent school for a number of years. We are now looking to support some grannies who have no-one to support them. We are wanting to sponsor a granny. We have been asked if they can use the first instalment to improve the living quarters of the Grannies. They want to repair badly worn floors and erect fences to prevent theft from the property.
MOVEMENT ON THE GROUND, INITIALLY LESVOS
It is sad that there are now 120 million refugees worldwide, that is nearly double that of 2015. TWOAT discussed this a few years ago and decided that we need to support these people in a constructive way. We were introduced to Movement on the Ground by Amelia Hart, who lives in Walton and worked with them for her gap year.
Movement on the Ground works inside the refugee camps encouraging self-help amongst the forcibly displaced people. The primary objective is to create a holistic and inclusive community model that unlocks the potential of refugees by providing them with access to education, vocational training, and psychosocial support. This model seeks to facilitate self-reliance, resilience, and a sense of normalcy among camp residents, all while optimizing the cost-effectiveness of humanitarian interventions. The first camp was in Lesvos, Greece and now they have missions in nine countries, including Lebanon.
FISHERMAN’S REST, MALAWI
Sally Nethercott’s nephew, Rob, worked at Fisherman’s rest for a few months after university and then again this last winter. Like many of their projects it is based in a small area south of Blantyre. They have many areas of helping the community. The most interesting is the horticultural project. Joe Robinson, our contact is a horticulturalist. He is encouraging tree planting and the support of these trees. Due to the climate, trees grow a lot quicker there and a small sapling can produce fruit after one year. In particular he shows people how to look after the trees and water them. In order to try and reverse the deforestation he also is helping people build clay efficient stoves. This reduces the firewood needed by 70%.
OTHER PROJECTS
We have continued supporting a project in Ukraine caring for orphans called SOS Childrens’ Villages and, in Africa, Motivation which provides wheelchairs. Via RUSH UK we supported a pupil at their school in Kenya and a medical camp run by our contact Liz Noble in April.
We take electrical and other tools to a workshop for volunteers to refurbish them for shipment overseas for villagers starting sustainable livelihoods. Contact Dick Shelley about donating tools or volunteering.
2023 NEWS
THE ‘KAKAMEGA PROJECT’ (RUSH) – INTERNATIONAL NEEDS, KENYA & BURKINA FASO
Sadly the situation in Burkina Faso is not good as it is one of the African countries that have been subjected to military coups which has caused considerable disruption to the civil population. International Needs, our contacts for this project, sent us letters from the children that we support. One of them, Justine, told us about her Christian faith whilst another, Roger, has ambitions to be a soldier to defend his country. Hopefully, if he eventually achieves his ambition, by then the armies in this part of the world will be focused on defending the rule of law. This is one of several projects that have asked us if we can increase our support due to the increased cost of living – we will be reviewing that request in January.
SEURR SANG’HIDA TRUST – ENTASOPIA PRIMARY SCHOOL, NKURUMAN, KENYA
Our support of this village community mainly focuses on disabled children and adults. Our donation this year helped to install flushing toilets near the classroom we built in 2022. It also enabled 3 parents and their children to go away for a week to learn how to rehabilitate disabled children. They are now enjoying passing this knowledge on to others in the Kenyan village.
BREAD, BEREGA, TANZANIA
We had a Zoom video conference with the doctor & clinician involved with the Epilepsy Clinic we fund at Berega Hospital. This was very useful – we now have a better understanding of the issues they face. Patients had been travelling up to 60 miles from surrounding villages to be treated at the clinic and receive supplies of essential medication to control their fits. Unfortunately many of them could no longer afford the travel cost. A new approach has the doctor and clinician travelling together on a motorcycle to visit each of the 9 villages once per month. Our support is used to cover the travel expenses and the cost of the medication as the Tanzanian government is now paying the salaries of the medical staff. We get regular reports that are showing an increase in the numbers being treated and also show us when the epileptic fits of those being treated are reducing – some patients have even been able to return to work.
FISH EAGLE SCHOOL, TANZANIA
Progress has been a little slow this year due to health issues for our contact who has been coordinating the school building work for the villagers near Tanga in Tanzania. His normal role is running a nearby holiday lodge business but it had a relatively quiet time during COVID. The building for the school library we mentioned in last year’s report has recently been completed and we have received an itemised statement of expenses totalling £630. The next stage will be to fit out the interior with shelving and of course books.
MTANDIKA TRADE SCHOOL, TANZANIA
As in many of our projects, costs have risen and we have asked our contacts to ensure our support is used most effectively. They now feel that it is less sensible for us to help students move on to higher education in Tanzania, as there are insufficient paid jobs for doctors and other professionals. However, those leaving the Trade School with practical qualifications and skills as tailors, electricians etc. are able to find local jobs.
The crops have been good which has helped the school as it grows some of the food that the students eat.
CALCUTTA CATHEDRAL RELIEF SERVICE (CRS), INDIA
Despite India’s recent successful moon landing there are still millions of their people living in extreme poverty. CRS launched an appeal in their latest newsletter to help fund their annual feeding program supporting some 500 children of impoverished families. We have sent £500 which should supply meals for a year to about 35 of these children.
NEPALESE SCHOOL TEACHERS, KERUNG, NEPAL (in the foothills of Mt Everest)
The school in the foothills of Everest is running well with many happy children and teachers. Our Sherpa contact has found work now that tourists are returning to the area. Unfortunately the Wi-Fi signals are still intermittent in the village so communications are less frequent than we would like. A zoom session would be amazing if we can arrange it – the scenery is spectacular!
EMMANUEL SCHOOL, THAI BORDER WITH MYANMAR (BURMA)
The latest report from this project told us that as a result of increased repression by Government forces in Myanmar yet another wave of Christian refugees has joined the camp which is just over the border in Thailand increasing the number attending the school to 236 children. The full report from the school including photos and messages from teachers can be read on our web site www.TWOAT.org
AMBONDROMIFEHY LITTLE SAPPHIRES SCHOOL, MADAGASCAR
Our contact is Laurette Totomarovario, who holds a senior position with the Mothers’ Union in Northern Madagascar. The project is in the small mining village of Ambondomifehy. In 2010 TWOAT donated funds to complete a fresh water well for the village. After this the MU developed a plan to create a nursery school at the site so that pre-school children no longer had to go to the mines with their parents. TWOAT has helped to fund the school ever since. Currently TWOAT provides the majority of the financial support for the two years of nursery plus four further years of primary schooling, the latter added at the request of parents as they were so pleased with the nursery provision. The combined school currently teaches about 40 children as well as ensuring that they have a nutritious meal every school day. We described earlier in this bulletin how the school’s needs for funds had risen (now £4,800 /year). We are delighted to report that St Peter’s in Walton have committed to providing nearly half this sum on an ongoing basis.
In a previous report we told you how one of the teacher’s children, Montesque, had been hit and badly injured by a coach so he had to be brought into class on a mattress. We sent funds to pay for his hospital treatment and he is now fully recovered – you can see a recent photo of him on our web site.
OTHER PROJECTS
The funds we send to Ludhiana Hospital in India allow poorer patients to be treated by the hospital. We continue to support children to attend school in Uganda via Rainbow Africa and we fund a community worker seeking to empower women via Papua Partners. We have also continued supporting a project caring for Ukrainian Orphans called SOS Childrens’ Villages and Motivation providing wheelchairs in Africa.
We took two loads of mostly electrical tools for refurbishment to the “Tools for Self-reliance” depot in Carshalton. These were well received as there is no longer much need overseas for hand garden tools!
2022 NEWS
THE ‘KAKAMEGA PROJECT’ (RUSH) – INTERNATIONAL NEEDS, KENYA & BURKINA FASO
We have been pleased with the level of feedback we have been receiving since a large charity, International Needs agreed to take over the RUSH project from the two Reigate school teachers who originally founded it but who were starting their retirement. We added an additional student to the two we were already supporting at the RUSH Academy in Kenya and agreed to send £500 to assist another of their school projects in Burkino Faso which was taking on extra pupils due to unrest in other parts of the country. International Needs periodically organise Zoom sessions so we can talk directly with some of the people working with the charity in Africa.
SEURR SANG’HIDA TRUST – ENTASOPIA PRIMARY SCHOOL, NKURUMAN, KENYA
Our support of this village community mainly focuses on disabled children and adults and continues to impress us when we see it on zoom presentations by Gill Pulei. There has been a kitchen upgrade and a new classroom which we helped to finish and equip. We are hoping that it will shortly be recognised as a special unit for funding by the government.
BREAD, BEREGA, TANZANIA
The Epilepsy Clinic we fund at Berega Hospital had expanded its outreach programme to include another nearby rural medical centre but unfortunately it suffered a setback when the clinician decided to leave to run his own pharmacy business. The hospital doctors have identified a potential replacement who already has a higher level of general medical skills and knowledge than the predecessor but not so much specialised knowledge with respect to epilepsy. There has been better news about government support with the possibility that 5 x staff at the hospital will be taken onto the government payroll. We are in discussion with our UK contact for BREAD Dr David Curnock and via email with the Tanzanian doctor who was overseeing the project and hope that the new clinician will be confirmed shortly.
FISH EAGLE SCHOOL, TANZANIA
The situation has improved somewhat since the worst of the pandemic has passed over. Our contact with the Fish Eagle School has also been assisting some other nearby villagers with building extra rooms for their school with part-funding from the EU. One room will serve as a library for which we sent a funding contribution. Libraries are an important feature for African schools and one will also be added to Fish Eagle.
MTANDIKA TRADE SCHOOL, TANZANIA
There have been requests this year for extra financial help for some of our six sponsored students in the vocational trade college. They needed equipment for their engineering courses and more recently payment of medical fees for one who was involved as a passenger in a serious road accident. With a decreasing rate of exchange we have also had to increase our payments by 10%, but it is well worth it as graduates of the college are regarded highly and so get good jobs.
CALCUTTA CATHEDRAL RELIEF SERVICE, INDIA
The project continues to work with the very poorest communities in one of India’s largest cities. The project is developing a film to illustrate their work and we are hoping to show it at an Indian themed evening event early in the New Year.
NEPALESE SCHOOL TEACHERS, KERUNG, NEPAL (in the foothills of Mt Everest)
A July e-mail from Rudra intimated that, as there is less COVID now, the children have been attending school regularly and are doing well. The extra money we sent to support poorer villagers without regular work to buy rice, oil etc. to feed their families was very much appreciated. There is an improving tourism situation in the Everest region so villagers are hopeful for more employment. The government is very poor financially and costs of everything are rising thus the extra teacher will not be paid by them. Our continuing salary support for teachers will remain essential for the children’s education. Whilst a zoom call would be fantastic for us, the internet is not reliable and is unlikely to be a priority for them at times of food shortages.
EMMANUEL SCHOOL, THAI BORDER WITH MYANMAR (BURMA)
The latest report from this project told us that as a result of increased repression by Government forces in Myanmar another wave of Christian refugees has joined the camp which is just over the border in Thailand. Altogether 37 additional children have joined Emmanuel School. We agreed with Revd. Tim Astin of the Good Shepherd that we can divert some funds that we jointly raised with them for another project to Emmanuel School. We can now send enough extra money this autumn so that the new children can also enjoy the lunches that we have been funding for the existing pupils over the last several years.
AMBONDROMIFEHY WATER & NURSERY SCHOOL PROJECT, MADAGASCAR
TWOAT has supported this project since 2010, initially funding a fresh water well for the mining village of Ambondromifehy. With the well in operation, the local Mothers’ Union was able to start a Nursery School so working parents did not have to take young children to the mining area. The Nursery School was so successful that parents asked for it to continue into primary years and it now extends to primary year 4. 35 children in Ambondromifehy are now benefitting from the schooling and some of the children who started in 2011 have now reached senior school, one of them being rated 2 years ahead of her age group!
TWOAT gets frequent feedback on the school’s achievements and difficulties. After COVID and severe storms in 2020-21, they are now facing the world-wide energy crisis, which has doubled the cost of fuel and food for them this year. In a ‘normal’ year the school costs about £5,700 pa to run, a rate of just £160/child. They can usually raise one-third from parents, with TWOAT supporting two-thirds (in 2021-22 we sent £3,800). But much higher living costs now means they fear that many more parents will not be able to afford school and lunch fees. Thus TWOAT may have to increase the support it offers to allow the school to continue providing the education, food and care that the parents and children so value.
OTHER PROJECTS
The funds we sent to Ludhiana Hospital in India allowed poorer patients with COVID to be treated by the hospital. We previously helped fund eye camps at St Luke’s Hospital in India but our contacts there have now retired to live in the UK. Summer Camps we supported in Albania have also been discontinued for the time being. We had difficulty contacting the Let It Grow project which has run small water pipelines to a village a few miles from Lake Malawi but we understand it is still active. We continue to support Rainbow Africa and Papua Partners and to send refurbished old hand tools to Africa via “Tools for Self-reliance”.
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