November - December Update from Children of Blessing Trust

November and December have flown by so quickly!  We have been extremely busy with large numbers of children attending everyday. 

We received a lovely donation of 375 Mosquito Nets through ERDO and were busy making sure that every child that attends our programmes had access to one.  Malaria is a real problem here in Malawi.   Many of our children developed physical disabilities, hearing impairment and epilepsy after a bout of Cerebral Malaria.  This is a very severe type of Malaria which affects the brain. 

Then the mad dash to finish everything before the centre closed for the Christmas break began.  We are very excited to have our new rocket stove installed at the Preschool building.  It was ready just in time for the Preschool Christmas Party.  Good thing too as we had 62 children attending the party as well as all their parents!  That is a lot of food! To cook!!!!  In the new year the company will come and install the roof over the stove so that it can be used in rainy weather.

In fact we have so many children attending all our programmes that we had to have 8 Christmas parties.  Each party had at least 30 children attending along with one parent and often a brother or sister or two.  We were so blessed to have funds donated through Thrive Malawi in Canada and Gala Tobacco in Malawi to help buy the food for the parties!

The preschool party was very fun as the children put on the Nativity Play for the first time.  Mary and Joseph were played by two of the children with disabilities and they were accompanied by a host of shepherds (dressed in cowboy costumes), wise men (dressed in graduation costumes) and one very cute angel dressed as a ballerina!  They really enjoyed the experience as you can see from the photo!

We closed out the year with a big celebration for the International Day for People with Disabilities.  COBT was invited to attend and 16 of our children and their parents went along to the party.