Although The Butterfly Tree did not win the Charity Times Award it was a great achievement to have been shortlisted to the final five and to be present amongst many of the well known charities. These big organisations do a terrific job, but it is the smaller charities such as ours that are needed to can fill in the gaps. On several occassions I have visited rural villages, like Mukuni, where the community have been given some bricks and cement to build a classroom, to find that these materials were only enough to reach window level, resulting in the project being abandoned.

We desperately need to build more classrooms and teacher’s houses to advance the education in these remote villages. Although we are making good progress in Mukuni Village the teacher’s accomodation is appalling, we are about to complete our third house but at least three more are needed. The Head Teacher has thirteen people living in his two bedroom house, five of them are orphans. With the ever increasing cost of living it pushes these families below the poverty line, which makes the orphan sponsorship program a vital support. As do the feeding programs, which enable the orphans and vulnerable children to receive a daily nutritional meal and helps to lift some of the burden from their guardians.  

 Adolescents like these boys at Mukuni need nutritional meals

By sponsoring an orphan you can give a child hope; by sponsoring a feeding program you can remove the hunger from hundreds of children and by funding a classroom you can give these children the education to overcome their hardships – Get Involved