{"id":3013,"date":"2010-08-15T21:46:09","date_gmt":"2010-08-15T21:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/?p=3013"},"modified":"2011-01-12T20:10:59","modified_gmt":"2011-01-12T20:10:59","slug":"august-newsletter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/2010\/august-newsletter\/","title":{"rendered":"August Newsletter"},"content":{"rendered":"

August is usually a quiet month for charities and fundraising, not so for The Butterfly Tree and Mukuni<\/a>. I have just returned from a visit to Zambia<\/a> and the development taking place in several of the schools is amazing. My first stop was to Kamwi<\/a>, a village just five kilometres from Mukuni Village<\/a>, but so underdeveloped that it could be fifty. As soon as I pulled up in my 4×4 Sylvia, the deputy head teacher said ‘Come quickly Jane your children are waiting for you’. As\u00a0we turned the corner\u00a0of our newly\u00a0built classroom, the entire school members were\u00a0waiting, holding banners – then the pupils broke into songs especially written to praise and thank\u00a0The Butterfly Tree<\/a> for the bore hole, the 1×2 classroom, the teacher’s house and the feeding program. I was overcome with emotion,\u00a0tears filled my eyes\u00a0as I listened to the children singing, knowing\u00a0that this\u00a0long awaited\u00a0project was now complete, which will enable the school to upgrade, shortening the distance many pupils have to walk.<\/p>\n

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Pupils at Kamwi Basic School\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Classroom\u00a0for Special Education <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Driving some fifty kilometres north west of Mukuni took me to Siamasimbi, a very remote village, which gets cut off during the rainy season when the rivers are too full to cross. The main bridge was destroyed through flooding and sadly\u00a0has not been repaired by the\u00a0local authorities.\u00a0Numerous members of the community were providing unskilled labour to help with the construction of a new classroom and teacher’s house we\u00a0have funded;\u00a0here these African children<\/a> finish their education around fourteen years of age, soon they will have an extra two grades along with the feeding program we are have introduced. Mandandi, half way between Siamasimbi and Mukuni has no such luxury, there is no school! This month the construction of our first entirely new school is taking\u00a0place, it should be completed for the start of the new term in September, along with the teacher’s house. To improve sanitation all these projects will have pit-latrines added.<\/p>\n

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Siamasimbi Community Participation\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Mandandi eagerly await new school<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Machenje Village, another particularly poor village will have a new pre-school. Not leaving out Mukuni a 1×3 classroom block has been added for the over-crowded grades 8& 9 who currently have four pupils sharing a desk. This will also have two offices and storerooms. All these building projects have been made possible thanks to the grant aid from the Jersey Overseas Aid Commission<\/a>. In addition to this is a classroom for Special Education, kindly donated by The Besom<\/a>. Children with physical disabilities can go into mainstrean school,\u00a0now children with mental health problems or impaired vision and hearing\u00a0can also\u00a0go to school.\u00a0 The Butterfly Tree pre-school will also have an additional classroom to cope with the ever-increasing number of attendees, which has now reached over 250. This has kindly been donated in memory of Sandra Challenger, a former employee of Saga,<\/a> whose charitable trust support our African malaria<\/a> program.\u00a0 There are also six community houses being built for widows and orphans.<\/p>\n

As always funds are needed for the Mukuni Health Centre for the HIV\/AIDS in Zambia<\/a> and malaria programs we support. A number of children\u00a0have been sent\u00a0to hospital for treatment and physiotherapy. We have just added a new water pump and paid for new pipework at the clinic. N’songwe Village will be able to open their community built clinic once the staff house we are funding has been constructed. With so few supplies from the government we have also sent out a shipment of medical supplies, some eighty boxes contain dressings, autoclaves and other equipment, besides clothes for the orphans and books and stationery for the schools.<\/p>\n

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Girls’ 100 metre sprint <\/em> Jane presenting ‘Change for The Better’ CD
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Mukuni Basic School<\/a> played hosts for the Kazungula District Sports held over three days at the end of term. The Butterfly Tree provided food for the competitors and transport for pupils from outreach schools. Sport is an essential part of the schools’ curriculum; unfortunately the facilities are very poor with most of the playing fields being dirt tracks. I was shocked to learn that the volley ball that we purchased in Livingstone cost \u00a323 ($34), the only one available locally. All the children ran in bare feet and very few had team shirts for the athletics or ball games. I saw several children collapse at the end of a race, possibly due to lack of food and fluid before they took part. Energy drinks, so commonly used for sporting activities\u00a0in the west are rarely seen. Despite\u00a0all the problems\u00a0the standard was excellent and many Mukuni pupils will go through to represent the Kazungula District in the Southern Province’s competition. I am delighted to say that some of the competitors on on our orphan sponsorship<\/a> program, proving once again the importance of being able to receive an all round education.<\/p>\n

Jane Kaye-Bailey<\/p>\n

Listen to the Mukuni children singing on YouTube<\/p>\n

Join our Facebook<\/a> page<\/p>\n

Buy our charity CD ‘Change for the Better<\/a> ‘<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

August is usually a quiet month for charities and fundraising, not so for The Butterfly Tree and Mukuni. I have just returned from a visit to Zambia and the development taking place in several of the schools is amazing. My More details ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[27,35,17,12,42,9,24,22,23,21],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3013"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}