Childrens Charity Direct

SRI LANKA - FEBRUARY 2020

Bob and Jenny have given a little update from their time in Sri Lanka.............

We have had a cover made for a bore hole, for an old people's home and are buying stuff tomorrow for a school library, which is non existent at the moment. We have also had a bike revamped for an old boy who lost his leg.

We bought the school 5 tables and 30 chairs, these were plastic garden chairs and tables, a recon computer and 5 book shelves   
They gave us a lovely thankyou celebration. Songs, speeches and some food and drink.

The children's home was in a terrible state. We got in touch with the charity that runs it and they came 2hrs drive to see us. We have agreed to help them bring it up to a better standard.

We also had a cover made for the well at the disabled old peoples home.

GAMBIA - NOVEMBER 2019

Bob and Jenny have just got back from The Gambia. They went out with another charity called GPO based in Horsemonden and stayed for 10 days.
It was very hot with lots of mosquitos, but they delivered a of clothes, computers, hospital stuff and school stuff.

 

Here is a little snippet from their diary.
"Hi all. We had a good journey, too long without a telly, 5hrs+.
We have been delivering computers, clothes and medical stuff and also painting classrooms.
We have visited the Sisters of Mercy and several schools.
Tomorrow we will go to Hart House. This is the children's home for the mentally handicapped and disabled. It's where the rocking horse is going.
We are going to Soma at the weekend for 3 nights.
The group of people we are with are good fun"

MARCH 2019

 

Bob and Jenny are currently in Nepal doing some great work, they have kindly sent some snippets of their daily diary.

Saturday 2nd March 2019
We left Nijgad early Saturday morning. Another ceremony of flowers and scarves. We got back to Kathmandu about lunchtime.

NEPAL CHRISTMAS 2018

What a lovely letter to receive and some lovely photographs.

Dear Bob, Jenny, committee members and all staff

2018

Update on Sharmilla, she is doing great! and her feet have come back to the normal posture. She went back to Kathmandu to get her plaster removed and has now she has got second plaster again, she also had a minor operation on her feet.
On the 12th of July she went back to Kathmandu again to get her second plaster removed.
Everyone is extremely happy to see sharmilla's recovery. There are still other families with this condition that we need to help.

 

NEPAL - MARCH 2018

We are pleased to announce that the school, library and clinic and all now completed and things are running very well, we have noted a few minor faults that can easily be modified on the next visit, when we return to the village later in 2018 or early 2019 we will give the school a second coat of paint, as it had just had the one primer coat at present.

We also ran a health camp there when we were there, meaning that we took two nurses with us from Kathmandu and set up a health check in the new clinic for the people in the village, we also had two doctors and one nurse local checking, they were checked for diabetes, blood pressure, and any other aliments and diseases.

There were over two hundred people checked and sent on there way with medicine that we supplied, We also suppled the new library with books, mostly translation and exercise books reading books, dictionary, white boards for eight classrooms, white board markers, white board erasers, pens, pencils, calculators, and some board games like chess etc.

We now have accommodation facilities for ourselves and anybody else who would like to attend the village, it has one room for sleeping and cooking and next door has a European toilet and separate wet room, cold water I'm afraid. We are happy to say that the new mountain road in now complete with two kilometres of road cut away from the rock face, so just a very small distance to walk now. Hooray. We will keep you updated on our next newsletter.

Newsletter 3 – Nepal March 2018
We have now left the village of dumkhim and headed back to Kathmandu, with everything up and running now in the village we will probably only have one more visit to this village at the end of this year or the early part of 2019.
We stayed in Kathmandu for two days sorting out where to go next and then we decided to go to pokhara, we have been here three times before and stayed in the monastery for three days, whilst we were there we visited the old people from the Tibetan settlement camp where we visited before, we bought them some new towels, soap, and new socks, and went to the Tibetan school next door and bought them new exercise books, two new footballs and a volleyball,
After leaving the monastery we went into the town of pokhara called lakeside, very hippyish, it has a nice big lake for walking around.
We are staying in a guesthouse where the rooms are €6 per night, just five minuets walk from all the amenities shops, restaurants,etc.
The owners of the guesthouse took us into the mountains to meet three erg poor family's,
The first family had a son of 21 years old and he developed a decease in the brain which left him with a mental age of a two year old, the father died shortly after leaving the mother to cope.
The second family a lady with three small children aged three, five and seven years lost her husband to blood cancer at the age of 24. She had to sell everything they owned for the funeral and to survive.
The third family consist of a mother, father, and two children one boy and one girl, the girl is aged 10 and the boy is aged 6.  The father at the age of six developed what we were told was poliomyelitis, which is a deformity of the feet, the feet turned into each other and bent over leaving him to walk on his in steps, almost crippled  and at the age of six the daughter developed the same thing as her father leaving them both very badly disfigured, the son is now six and is started to signs of the same disease.
So we just could not see this family take anymore of this crippling disease and decided to do something about it, that will be in newsletter no 3

Newsletter 3 - Nepal March 2018
Just one week to go now before we start our journey back to the uk, we still have a whole load to do yet,
We went to a very small village called Thaple Tilhar in the mountain with the people that own the guest house we are staying in, it's about a 45 minute cab ride with unmade roads, there we go were asked to visit three of the poor families that live there,
Previously I mentioned about the man that had a brain disease and a family that lost the husband/father to Leukaemia at the age of 24.
The third family has what we thought was poliomyelitis which is a deformity of the feet, the father got it when he was six years old, the 10 year old daughter got it when she was six, now they have a son who is six and he is showing signs of it.
So this week we visited two hospitals, one only done small cuts, and dellie bellies and we then told to go to another hospital called green pastures which is about 20 minutes in a cab, we had a brilliant meeting with a doctor who gave us as much time as we needed and he has now told us it's clubfoot syndrome which is a curvature of the feet, if you find the time Google clubfoot and it will tell you all about it.
We were very happy knowing it’s nothing to do with polio now and left the hospital, the six year old boy will be going to see the doctor we saw on the 25 th of March to see if he has the start of clubfoot. There's no treatment unfortunately in Nepal except for a hospital 30 kilometres east of Kathmandu which is about 230 kilometres from where we are.

So this Sunday we are having the child collected from her house by taxi in the mountains with her grandfather and we are taking them to Kathmandu by bus, neither of them speak English, the bus ride will take about 9 hours and we will all stay in Kathmandu for the night and go to the hospital first thing Monday morning. We have contacted the hospital in Kathmandu and they await our arrival, we will keep you updated in

Newsletter number 4 - March 2018 Nepal
As you know by our last newsletter we were packing up in pokhara and going down to the hospital 30 kilometres west of Kathmandu with Sharmila and her grandfather by bus, it's a 230 kilometres trip one way.

All went well for us all and the journey took 9 hours as expected. Along the mountain roads, We booked into a hotel with Sharmila and her grandfather in the heart of Kathmandu we had a meal in the hotel and all had an early night.
Monday morning at 6.45 am bang bang on the door it was Sharmila looking for her white friends, in she came and out with the iPads, So all up and showered and after breakfast off we went on a 30 kilometres car journey to the hospital.

The hospital was four kilometres off the main road and sits high on top of a mountain all on its own, once we arrived in the reception we were greeted with a very warm welcome. We had four appointments ahead of us that day and everybody was amazed to see how bad sharmila’s feet were.

After seeing the four different doctors we were sat down and had a meeting with them all and they explained everything about clubfoot. The doctors told us that they haven't seen anything like this in a long while and wanted to admit her there and then for two months minimum, well as expected tears were flowing until we could come to some sort of decision.

We eventually all agreed that Sharmila and her grandfather returned to their village home and spoke to the rest of the family.
So the good news is that they are coming back to the hospital next Sunday and Monday to be admitted, the hospital only normally take female guardians with female patients and not grandparents but she only wants her grandfather as her mother does not like Sharmila
So we returned to the hotel last night and we all went out for a lovely meal with lashings ice cream, and we put them back on the pokhara bus at 7 am this morning.

The treatment she will be going through for the first two months is she will have both legs plastered and the plaster will be removed every five days and then reset altering the shape of her feet this will be done ten times, then she will be reassessed after this has been done, the whole treatment will take about four years.
The good news is that the doctors said that she should make a near 100% recovery and walk normally,
This hospital is the second best hospital in the world, Brazil has the first for this sort of treatment.

NEPAL - OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016

In October 2016, we went back to Nepal. In England we were in touch with a Ghurka who lives in Kent and is still in the army. He told us about his village in Nepal that was affected by the earthquake in 2015. They badly needed a new school, which not only supports their village, but others as well, so we agreed to build the school in the village of Dumkhim. We traveled to the village with Capt. Nanibabu Magar, the Ghurka. After a long 4 by 4 drive, then a trek, we arrived at the village with a welcome fit for a king. The school was started while we were there and is now completed and being used. The village has no electric, sanitation, or even a road to it.
We have also set up a welfare fund, where money can be borrowed for medical or work related reasons etc. Our next project in the village, will be to build a new medical center. We also went back to Pokhara in west Nepal. The children's home, that we support, needed hot water for the showers in the boys block. So we had a water solar panel installed. The boys couldn't wait to use it, as the weather was getting cooler.
We also went back to the Tibetan village, where we supported an old people's home last time. When asked what they needed, they said socks, so we bought them 2 pairs each, flannels and soap. We came away from Nepal with about 8/10 friendship scarves each. Everyone is so grateful.

We plan is to revisit Nepal in the autumn.

 

 

 

SYRIAN REFUGEES - JANUARY 2016

In January 2016 we decided as there was a lot of upset in Nepal - blockades, so we have left it till things have settled down.

So, Hope and Aid Direct, who we went to Kosovo with, asked Bob if he would drive one of the 7 half ton trucks back from Lesbos.We agreed and went out 5 days before the convoy arrived. Charles the organiser had asked us, at a meeting in his house before we left, to look for a suitable Warehouse to unload the convoy into.

We visited many warehouses and camps, where the refugees, (known as guests) were staying. The one we used was already being used by others to store aid. Once the lorries were unloaded we distributed aid to camps on a daily basis, or worked in the warehouse sorting out, or worked in the camps a couple of times. My group saw one boat come in, luckily everyone landed safely. We heard some horrific ordeals that these people had to endure. After spending 12 days on the island, Bob drove back and I flew. It took him 7 days to get back

THAILAND - 2015

We went to Bangkok in 2015. A Thai friend wanted to go at the same time, which proved to be very helpful as English wasn't spoken at a lot of places we went to. But she had things to do while there, so language was a problem when she wasn't around. We all spent some time at a disabled children's home of 600 boys. Some areas of the home were very distressing. On the whole we were very impressed with the way it was run. We helped with activities, bought 2 bed trollies, which helped with showering them and paid for the mending of wheel chairs. We also took and  paid for a days outing for 3 children, along with other volunteers. A lot of the children were bed bound and had to wear nappies, which staff used to make up. But there were no nasty smells anywhere. This was government run but lacked enough money for lots of things. We travelled up to Udon Thani, which is a poorer part of Thailand. On speaking to a local, she told us of a school in a poor area. So we hopped on to a tuk tuk as you do and went way out into the countryside. The school was a charming run down building. The canteen and kitchen was very basic and shabby. The tables were unhygienic so we bought new ones, all they wanted when asked were some cd's in English with books, so we also bought them. Cakes, biscuits and drink were next. Also book shelves .They were so grateful.  Then it was time to come home

KOSOVO- 2014

We went to Pristina in 2014, with a charity called Hope and Aid Direct. I drove one of the 3 & half ton trucks. Jenny flew. There was also one 18 ton and a 40 ton trucks. They make the journey twice a year, packed with food, clothing, shoes, bedding, toys and lots of other items. 18/20 of us spent the week going out daily, distributing to villages. They haven't really recovered from the war in their country, so are very poor. A charity called Mother Theresa organised the drop offs. We plan to do this again. In 2016 they intend to do an extra trip to Lesbos to help the refugees.

 

NEPAL - 2013

In 2013 we went to Kathmandu. We painted the children's home inside and paid for the outside to be painted. We also bought some new kitchen equipment. We visited a leprosy hospital and were then lntroduced to a lady who has leprosy and other related problems. She was looking after 6 orphaned children. She had lost her husband and 2 children who had been run down by a lorry while going to school on their motorcycle. We bought her a sewing machine so that she could teach the children how to use it and also rent it out, it had to have a treadle as she had no fingers. The girls had to thread it for her and they also made jewellery for money.

Then we went to Pokhara, where we stayed in a monastery for young boys. We bought them food and scrubbed their canteen, it was filthy.
We came across a Tibetan refugee village, just up the road. They had an old peoples home. We bought them towels and a large board game, to keep their interests up. They were lovely, very appreciative. We moved down to Pokhara town and found The Rainbow Children's Home. They had hired 2 young men to dig 36 meters down, to make a well. So we supplied the pump, pipe work and cables. Also many other items for the home. The well will save them money. The owners also do a lot of work out in the villages. 

 

GHANA - 2012

In 2012 we went to Ghana through a contact here in France. The family who helped us over there, ran a school which we supplied with revamped computers. We were told of an orphanage, being run by a woman who has AIDS. She was taking in children who also had AIDS. We painted the house inside and out, with the help of one of the older boys. We also bought bunk beds made locally, mattresses, pillows, and bedding which was also made locally by the women. Also many other items.The children were previously sleeping on the floor. We stayed nearby.

 

KENYA - 2009/2011

Kenya. In Mombasa we revisited 3 of the orphanages. Setting up a water storage tank, as water only came through every so often. We also painted the home and had a toilet block built. We then found some waste land where people were camping, a little girl was suffering from an ear infection, so we payed for her medical treatment. Another home the children were showering from one tub, using the same water for all. So we had a shower built. Also many other things were purchased along the way.