Raise a Smile News

20.12.2011 Raise a Smile Zambia trip report

Raise a Smile founding members Gray, Esther and Kevin are finally back home after six successful weeks in Zambia. They spent their time visiting our three supported projects to let you know how your donations are being spent. First stop on the trip was:

The new kitchen at the Magazine Community School

Magazine Community School

Gray was at the school in April and May of this year already, to build the new school toilets. Since then, they have also built a new kitchen which helps greatly in feeding the 200 pupils that all receive one free meal from the school per day! During our visit, we were lucky enough to watch some traditional Zambian dancing. A group of pupils recently won a competition for their dancing and were desperate to show it off for the rest of the school and visitors! You can see pictures of the new kitchen and the girls in action below this report.

Bwanji Kids Orphanage

Next stop was N’gombe compound in Lusaka. The Bwanji Kids orphanage is forever expanding, since our last visit they have been able to offer a new home to 12 new children. Unfortunately the new children have not been able to attend school yet due to a lack of funds. Therefore, our current goal for this project is to fundraise for school fees. Sign up to become a member and for just €10 a month you could make sure that one of the new children at the orphanage can attend school, become a member now!

Kazembe Orphanage

The most exciting part of our trip was definitely transporting 4 dairy goats to the Kazembe Orphanage. Goats for meat production are widespread in Zambia, but milk goats are unfortunately much harder to find. Therefore, we had to buy them 100 km east of Zambia’s capital, Lusaka, and then transport them nearly 1,000 km to Kazembe. We rented a minibus and removed the seats to give the goats some space. As an animal lover, Esther spent most of the trip sat on the spare tyre in the back of the minibus with the goats to make sure they felt at home.

Esther making paper mache masks with the children at the Kazembe Orphanage

Unfortunately, the goats decided to show their gratitude by wagging their tails, flicking urine everywhere. We have never been so happy to see a shower as we were after the journey to Kazembe!

We were also fortunate enough to be in Kazembe just in time to see Nathan (who is sponsored by the Raise a Smile Hostel Berlin) celebrating his third birthday. (see pictures below)

Click on the thumbnails below to see more photos from our trip!

Anyone who knows Raise a Smile well, will know that we are currently planning to open a new school. For that reason, we also spent time meeting with the ministry of education and doing research into finding a suitable site for the school. We will publish more on the new school project in the coming year.

Everyone at Raise a Smile would like to wish you a very merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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