July - August 2011
Work continues on the new house as we try and get ready for the 5th of September start of school. The wall and gate are in place and the septic tank has been repaired. The electrical system has been overhauled, curtains are up. The next step is to get the plumbing hooked up and to replace the pit latrines. We had a structural engineer come and look at the house because there were some cracks in one of the walls. It looks like the problems are minor and resulted from water damage during the rainy season. We will need to construct drains around the house to prevent the water from pooling against the house in the future.
We have submitted our application for registration with the Preschool Association of Malawi and have been given the go ahead to start the preschool. They will come once we are open to inspect the facilities paying particular attention to the toilets. We have invited parents in our neighbourhood to submit applications for their able bodied children to attend our preschool. It is our goal to have 18 children with disabilities integrated with 12 able bodied children. The able bodied children will be role models for the kids with disabilities. The able bodied kids will also come to see the kids with disabilities as kids just like them. Hopefully as they go into the regular school system they will be advocates for the children with disabilities and therefore lessen the stigma and discrimination the kids with disabilities experience in school.
We are also in discussions with Child Care Plus, a programme of ERDO (the relief and development branch of PAOC) to see whether some of our children can be part of their Child Sponsorship programme. If this works out then the most vulnerable of our children will be sponsored. This will provide them with assistance with school fees, school uniforms, and other important things like bicycles to travel to school and therapy.
We have a new Malawian volunteer named Mike. He has been coming regularly to help us enter data in our data base. With his help we have determined that we have registered over 800 clients even before we enter the new clients from the Adziwa and Daeyang Luke Hospital outreaches.
At the end of July we started the newest outreach clinic at the Daeyang Luke Hospital in Mchesi. It was nice to see many old faces as well as new ones. Even 2 clients from Lumbadzi came as this clinic is closer to their homes than our centre in Area 25.
In August we have been working hard to provide our parents with disability and ways to assist their child at home. Altogether we run 10 different parent workshops. Each time we hold the workshops we decide which ones of the ten need to be held and how many sessions of each workshop are needed to ensure that all the parents have the chance to come and learn. This time we are running 7 of the workshops over a ten day period. The topics we cover include Introduction to disability, nutrition and food security, how to teach your child to eat, drink, wash, dress and go to the toilet independently, why it is important for your child with a disability to go to school, how can we help your hearing impaired child and many more.
We have been fortunate to have many experts assist us with our workshops this time around. Rebecca, an Australian Audiologist, assisted with the workshop for the hearing impaired clients. She has also been involved with our kids over the past year doing hearing assessments and screening kids to find hearing impairments. Jean. A nurse from New Zealand helped us once again to do the Nutrition and Food Security workshop. She has now moved back to New Zealand. We wish her all the best as she adjusts to live back in new Zealand.
Please continue to pray for us in the next few weeks as we strive to get the preschool started!