No doubt many of you who live in areas that are affected by flooding due to the past week’s deluge of rain are wishing it would stop! In complete contrast Zambia’s severe drought, caused by El Niño, continues and people are desperately in need of rain. While hunger is widespread and reports of malnutrition in both children and adults has been shared with us, The Butterfly Tree is reaching out to people in outreach areas of Mukuni, Nyawa, Sekute, Musokotwane and most recently Moomba Chiefdom. Our local trustees and volunteers are working tirelessly to distribute bags of ground maize. To date we have distributed over 3,000 25kg bags with a further 1,000 allocated for this coming week. Over the weekend we reached Moomba, the most remote Chiefdom in the Kazungula District where we provide support for malaria prevention. The distance from our base in Livingstone to Moomba is almost 200km and much of the driving is off road. When I previously drove to this area it took several hours. Yesterday the community leaders told our volunteer that no other support is available and were overjoyed to receive 200 bags of ground maize. In addition to Moomba last week our local trustees distributed 200 bags in Mukuni, 200 in Sekute and 250 each in Musokowane and Nyawa. The latter two each have over 400 villages. All the orphans on sponsorship also received a 25kg bag each. Thanks to generous donations from The Murphy Family, Nick Bousliman, and numerous individuals thousands of people not only have food, but they now have hope! After hearing that only 20 out of 60 children were attending a class at Lumbo primary school our volunteers were in this region distributing maize in the dark. The following day the head teacher reported that 55 children were back in class. The rainy season should start next month, and people can soon start planting crops and vegetables. In addition to 10 food security projects for women and disabled young people, we are donating seeds and fertilizer to schools and communities to create sustainability. Instead of maize sorghum seeds will be given out as this crop is less rain dependent than maize and has a high protein content. By the end of this week we will have installed 28 boreholes this year and 10 water systems. Despite the drought we continue to make substantial progress with education projects. We will shortly have funds in place to develop another primary school thanks to former England rugby player, Victor Ubogu, who kindly asked his family, friends, and colleagues to donate for a classroom block instead of giving him presents. More orphans have been added to the orphan sponsorship programme. We will continue supporting a boy who completed grade 12 at Mukuni secondary school after being offered a place at university. For those of you who are waiting updates please accept my apologies for the delay. I will be going to Zambia next month and aim to get all the updates. Once again, my sincere thanks to everyone who has answered our appeals to emergency food relief and for all the other projects which are helping to transform the lives of children and young people. Jane Kaye-Bailey Founder Follow us on Facebook and Instagram