CHILDREN OF AFRICA: SPONSOR A CHILD

1. Most of the kids to be sponsored are not orphans, however, they live with parents or relatives who cannot afford to bring them to school due to lack of funds. Therefore, most of times they remain at home with nothing else to do rather than grazing their cows and goats.

2. This is an educative sponsorship program, since it is focused on providing these children with the necessary school materials for them to be accepted in school for a whole year.

3. Sponsorship fees: 60 Euros per year for Primary School and 250 Euros approx. for Secondary School (depending on the school where the student is accepted).

Although the sponsor is not required to sign any contract or to give any bank details, it is advisable that he/she previously analyses the true nature of such sponsorship, and proves to be responsible enough to compromise in costing not only one school year but the whole Primary Education. And only if possible, think of helping the kid to have access to Secondary School and university. If a sponsor cannot cover the studies of the sponsored kid anymore, it is required to give notice to the association with time enough for them to find a new sponsor. Every year course starts in January and ends in December, with term breaks in April, August and Christmas.

4. Tsunza is a very poor village, with very few resources and villagers have very little education, if any. Mortality rates are very high and it is within one of the five poorest regions of the country. Accordingly, the main objective of our program (Sponsoring Tsunza) is sending at least 15 of these kid to university before 2015 and, after a certain period of time, see them working as engineers, doctors, teachers, scientists and lawyers, who will provide their village with the necessary tools to become self-sufficient, by building their own wells, by paving roads, bringing electricity and current water, by building hospitals, etc. It is a very daring dream indeed, but we are not scared of struggling.

5. Once we receive the payment either through bank account, hand on hand, or Western Union (you can send it even when we are in Kenya), you must fill up the APPLICATION FORM and send it to us by email (lto idia.belascoain@gmail.com), stating the name of the child both in the form and in the bank transfer. Soon we will upload the photos and names of the more than 300 kids who need to be sponsored in Tsunza in this blog.

After that, in our next visit to Kenya, we (me and any of the volunteers who will come next summer) will be in charge of buying all the necessary materials (shoes, uniforms, pencils, colours, books, etc), pay for the school fees and enroll them in the provided school. You will see the photos of the children who are already sponsored with their uniforms and shoes in the blog, as well as a section with the new kids who are waiting for sponsors.

6. Next sponsorship program (2010-11) will take place from now up to the month of June. And all the practical job will be carried out next July when we go back to Kenya with the next group of volunteers in the workcamp 2011.

7. We also encourage you to contact us if you wish to help us finding more sponsors.

8. MULTI-SPONSORING PROGRAM: During this last summer workcamp, all the volunteers who came to Kenya with us developed a very interesting idea to achieve our main objective (bringing 15 students to university before 2015). They came up with the idea of multi-sponsors, which consists of sponsoring a student's university fees among a group of people. This group of people might be interested in sponsoring the fees of a secondary school student each, that costs around 250 Euros. If we join and multiply this 250 Euros by 5 people it already gives 1000 Euros. This group could either be a group of friends, workmates, relatives, classmates, etc.

YOU CAN SEE SOME OF THE KIDS THAT NEED AN SPONSOR BY CLICKING HERE FOR PRIMARY SCHOOL, AND HERE FOR SECONDARY SCHOOL.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT LIDIA BELASCOAIN (lidia.belascoain@gmail.com)

THE ESSENCE OF VOLUNTEERING

"Volunteering abroad is not an opportunity given to the rich and developed citizens of occidental countries in order to experience an extraoridinary adventure. In fact, I think it's unacceptable that we allow ourselves the luxury of dreaming about sensational experiences, while the people of the needy countries we want to visit can only allow themselves to dream of some piece of bread in their mouths.

A volunteer workcamp is not a selfish opportunity to satisfy our egos or our cravings for travelling; a volunteer workcamp is an opportunity that the volunteer himself provides in order to offer inconditional assistance and support, time, economic resources and efforts to the most needy ones; an opportunity to change a small, tiny piece of the world.

Therefore, a volunteer should never allow himself to become an extra burden for those he's trying to help. It would be simply nonsense. A volunteer must be a relief, water on top of fire, sugar on top of the bitterness that rules their lives, a streched hand, a balm for the open wounds, a whisper of peace...

Then, we cannot expect that a home, where we are planning to spend some time and where they already have problems enough to bring 50 children to school and provide them with food, water, clothes, etc., opens its doors for us only for love's sake, just becoming another mouth to feed. It is not the same being a volunteer in our own country or being a volunteer in a different continent in somebody else's home. Here, we can offer our time and efforts and later go back home where we are catered with everything. In Africa, to become an assistant requires something else.

When we arrive at an orphanage, we become part of it, another member, which means more food, more water, more electricity, more dirty clothes, more washing-up liquid, more bed covers, etc. It is clear that the romantic idea that Occidentals have of bringing our big love and tenderness to those people, of spending time by their side and exchanging our knowledge with them is highly praisable. But there is something that we should never forget: LOVE ON ITS OWN DOES NOT FEED CHILDREN.

I've been moving in and out of Kenya for almost four years now, living with those incredible peoples, and I swear that they really appreciate the time we spend with them, the moments we listen to their problems, the time we play with their children... But, no matter how strong you might me hugging them, if in that moment their stomachs are empty, and there is nothing to bring to their mouths, our big love will be vanished to ashes. And it is normal and understandable: human beings can only allow themselves the pleasure of loving and dreaming when the basic human needs are covered (drinking, eating and sleeping).

As a consequence, with my full belly, I allow myself a dream: to fill their bellies so that they can also dream. And among many others, the best ways to achieve such a dream are those where governments will never invest enough, building up strong and long-lasting infrastructures, with auto-sustainable projects which can bring them autonomy and better life standards and, ABOVE OF ALL, improving the whole institution of education by building up better schools, with better materials, improving teachers formation, and working on the basis of universal values and human rights.

Susanna