changing communities through sport for 500 kids

Once again as Harvesters in Sport Trust, we would like to express our sincere gratitude for your continued support. We are continuing on an upward trajectory!

We have not had many workshops and visits this period but our work has continued unabated. The Social Worker and our team of Volunteers continued to explore possibilities for making our approach better. The beauty of our work is as we work we get to notice a few new areas needing our attention. As discussed below.

As explained in our previous newsletter we now have a 3-roomed cabin structure for the 15 most vulnerable children. We have not made any new progress as we continue to cooperate with the department of social services. They want to have their own assessments done and they might give us children from other areas to place in the temporary home. However, our pursuit of mattresses, blankets, and utensils for the home continues. Additionally, we have not managed to raise any new money to help us create 2 meals a day minimum for the 15. Our efforts and appeals continue.

We continue to push on towards our goal of feeding 500 children. Large numbers turn up for food during the weekends (200 or so on average), and during the week we have remained attending to the 60 to 70 critically in need of food. They too need at least 2 meals a day. Our nutrition levels have not necessarily improved as we have not mastered any new monies for the purpose but our quest for a more balanced diet for the children continues. Yes, our variety has improved but we are still not there yet. We however continue to ensure proper sanitary measures are adhered to in the preparation of the meals. We are happy to announce that we have not had a food-related ailment since we started the program. Kudos to the kitchen staff! Thank you for your donations and contributions as you are making it all possible.

While our laundry program has continuously improved since the birth of the program, notably increased numbers of children being covered in the program. From 22 children to 30 weekly, we are still handling just a fraction of the children in need. We can only hope you our friends sow into this aspect and help us to do more.

The School Program has remained largely stable powered by your financial assistance. We are eternally grateful for the few we are able to send to school. We do have many more who could use school fees support but maintaining the ones we have has been a major achievement this 2022. We do not owe any school any money. All fees are current and between now and January the focus is to get adequate fees in place before term 1 in 2023 starts. A few of the children will be leaving primary to go to high school. A major transition for some. We are thankful to the Social Worker and his team for the counseling sessions that have helped settle a lot of our children.

On the home learning front, We are keen to introduce Digital Literacy. It's sad that in this day and age the bulk if not all of the children in our program have had no access to the internet. We want to buy 5 tablets and create a digital literacy program by the end of February. We cant dare get into this in January as we need to make sure our children are back in school first then early February onwards works on a program for digital Literacy can begin. We can have the children in several groups and take turns to go and learn.

 This program should complement our homework and study scheme. This unfortunately is not very popular among children. We need to find ways to incentivize the process to get buy-in.  

Post-Covid lockdowns we finally managed to host our first sports day. (we had begun sporting activities as reported in our last report) We had the following sporting disciplines. Football (Soccer), Volleyball, and Netball. These remain our 3 core sporting disciplines. Children turned out in large numbers and managed to do knock-out competitions. And just have loads of fun in general. The fun is what it's all about!! We are looking forward to hosting another sports day in February 2023. Hopefully, invite a few sporting legends to come and give inspirational talks and tell kids amazing stories from their own sporting careers.

Finally, thank you so much for believing in us and for supporting our work. 2022 is almost done and dusted and our eyes are on 2023. May we serve together in 2023 and perhaps do even more as we seek to keep changing lives, one life at a time! We are truly thankful and honored to have you journey with us! #TOGETHERWECAN.