Click here to view NEWSLETTER Feb 2008

Dear Friends,

We would like to invite you to help make a difference in some children's lives.  Can you imagine living in a 10' x 10' shack on an old garbage dump with only your 90-year old grandmother to help you through life?  There is no water and no electricity.  Two feet in front of the entrance to your shack runs a rivulet of water that includes human waste.  If you are fortunate to eat today it will probably be rice cooked on a tiny charcoal cooker.  Attending school on a regular basis is a luxury that exists only in your dreams.  You are 14 years old and your sister is 19.  This is the life for Martha and Mary who have lost both parents and quickly became orphans in the huge "Kibera" slum outside Nairobi, Kenya.  Before she died the last thing their mother told Mary, the oldest, was "go to church, take care of Martha, get an education......I love you".  These children, and others like them, have endured the unimaginable and have a future of hopelessness.....but we can give them a future of hope.

Today, Mary is finishing her last semester of secondary school (high school) and Martha is in the middle of her first year.  Mary wants to go to college in January.  Amazingly they both have excellent grades even though they still live in the shack and study at night by light from a kerosene lantern.  They, along with their cousin John, also an orphan in Kibera (the three of them plus a little neighbor are in the photo attached to this email), are the first children we have been able to help through the "Kibera Orphan Education Project".  You see, education is the only hope for these children.  It is how they can break out of the cycle of poverty.

This project is a natural follow-up to the earlier "adventure", the "Mosquito Net Project" that was created last year.  That project, which has protected 24,000 people from malaria, provided us an opportunity to develop experience with a fantastic in-country coordinator in Kenya.  This has been critical to the Kibera Orphan Education Project because this person, Father Dennis Geng (an American who has lived and worked in Kenya for ten years), screens the children before we put them in the program, which allows us to have the greatest possible chance of success with those we are able to help.  This program also has two of the same attributes that helped make the "Mosquito Net Project" so successful....(1) - your donation will go directly to the children (no middlemen or governments are involved) and (2) - there are no administrative expenses so 100% of the donations are used for the children's education.

We would like to ask you to join us in this effort.  If we all pool our money to provide an opportunity for an education to these and other children in the Kibera slum just think of the direct impact we can have.  We will be supporting the children as a group.  For the cost of about three lattes per week ($600 per year) we can give one child an opportunity to go to secondary school for one whole year.  For the cost of $2,000 we can provide college tuition for one full year.  Once a child begins school we will need to ensure they are able to continue so the program will be of an ongoing nature.  We are hoping to be able to provide an education for 25 children.  To that extent we would ask you to donate whatever amount you feel you can afford.  You can make your donation quarterly, bi-annually or annually.  We will commit to sending you scheduled invoice reminders.  We will also send you regular updates about the children and the program.  Though this ongoing donation is our aim we want to emphasize that we will be very happy with whatever amount and with whatever frequency (even if it is "one-time" only) you feel you can afford.  We would like everyone to be able to participate.  As with the "Mosquito Net Project", Blessed Teresa of Calcutta parish, a tax deductible 501 (c) (3) charitable organization, has agreed to act as a conduit for the funds.  We would like to ask you to join us by donating to "Blessed Teresa of Calcutta - Kibera Orphan Education Project" (BE SURE AND WRITE "KIBERA ORPHAN EDUCATION PROJECT" IN THE MEMO LINE ON THE CHECK).