Hi Mike,

Thanks for your e-mail and thank you especially for the wonderful gift of enriched soft porridge. The children really enjoyed seeing Otto's plane come in and land. And to sit in the pilot's seat and have their photos taken - wow! We all really appreciated it. I gather that by the time Otto flew over the Centre to tip his wings in farewell there were a good number of children there to wave him off.

What Otto said about our meager resources is right. We still struggle on a weekly basis to find money for food, wood and water to feed daily the 120 kids at our five Centers. Any help you can give us would be really appreciated.

Here’s a brief history of the project:

The Mponegele Ke Itirele Project was started in 2002 by a group of retired and still practicing teachers in the Mankweng area, some 25 km northeast of Polokwane in Limpopo Province. The founders had all seen the problems experienced by orphan children in their schools. Initially, the Project had tried to address far wider community issues in the Mankweng area, but had had great difficulty in attracting funding. Early in 2005, with a small donation of funding from a retired educationalist living in the UK, the Project decided to focus on supporting the orphans themselves. The Project currently has some 200 orphans on its database.

We believe that the orphans are best living in their own communities with caring relatives who have the support of the Project, however difficult this is for the relative with little or no money. We think that this is better than withdrawing the children to an orphanage. Mponegele Ke Itirele currently works with local Volunteer Care Givers each of whom lives in one of the areas covered by the Project. These volunteers are themselves mostly unemployed and give of their services without financial reward. They know their areas well and have developed excellent working relations with the orphans and their households. They deliver the food and clothes, and in some cases cook Government provided food for the orphans. Initial funding came from those who originally started the Project (most of whom are living on teachers’ pensions) and from three retired British people who formerly worked on an education project in the area.

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