UNICEF's Visit to Child Hope Zambia

Above is the finished ECCDE center, and below is one under construction.

UNICEF is one of the supporters of Child Hope Zambia. Above you can see what the Early Childhood Education Centers look like. There is an article about their visit with Child Hope, that you can enjoy here: http://fieldnotes.unicefusa.org/2008/08/talking_walls_in_zambian_schoo.html
To sponsor a child, visit: http://childhopezambia.blogspot.com/

The Early Childhood Education Program- ECCDE

These are pictures of the Early Childhood and Child Development Education the Child Hope has set up for the children in the southern province of Zambia. They have built the centers from the ground up. These are important for the communities because the children need a place to go and a place to learn.

These centers start with children at age one and go until the age when the child can begin primary school. As you can see by the photos, the classrooms are still in need of many things. We hope to provide the educational tools to the classrooms through sponsorship. You will see that there are now "little girls" and "little boys" added to the Child Hope Zambia blog. Sponsorship of these children will provide their classrooms with learning materials such as workbooks, note books, pencils, crayons, coloring books, and more!

This is what Child Hope Zambia is providing the communities through the ECCDE program:

• Constructing centres for Early Childhood Development Classes (Day Care Centers) through community participation shared among villages. Under this, the community undergoes mobilization for community development training so as to support mobilization and local resource sourcing.

• Establishing Day Care Centers and Pre-Schools for young children and literacy classes for adults to improve their reading and writing skills.

• Sensitisation of communities on the importance of educating children as well as cross cutting issues of child rights and how children can participate in the process of their development.

• Child Supplementary feeding programmes to support and encourage orphans and other vulnerable children to attend school and those children affected by HIV/AIDS.

Are These Not the Sweetest Little Ones You Have Ever Seen?

When I got these pictures of the early childhood education children, I had to laugh. They are so sweet, and so confused about what is going on. One of them has so many tears coming down you would think she was being tortured (not getting her picture taken), and the last one is funny too- Because it looks like he is praying, "Dear God, please get these scary people that are trying to take my picture out of my face." Or maybe his prayer is, "Dear God, please help them to find some candy so my friend will stop crying." Too funny!

I think the volunteers are going to have to bring some suckers with them next time. Stay tuned. These little guys aren't on the blog yet because we don't have the budget up. The photo shoot was set up for the primary and secondary students. However, when the volunteers arrived, they saw the mothers with their little ones. Everyone was trying to get in the program, and they couldn't turn them away (no in good conscience). So, they took the preschool tots photos, and we will get them set up soon. There are still plenty of children to choose from on the blog (just a little under 200): http://childhopezambia.blogspot.com/ The children go back to school on Monday, so we plan to announce the sponsorships that same week. The children who have sponsors at that time will write their first letter to their sponsor!

A Child Hope Education

Can you imagine how much fun they would have with colored chalk!?

Do you remember what your preschool looked like? Your elementary school? I wonder if any of you would say that your school looked like the one does above.

I remember when I took a semester of college work in Mexico. The room was similar to the one you see above- there was no air conditioning, no text books, and you may be surprised to know that no toilet paper or soap was provided for the "out-house" type toilet facilities! I was shocked! I paid good money, and I expected to be able to use toilet paper!!

I remedied the toilet situation by carrying my own soap and toilet paper around in my back pack, but some of the other items were not so easy to come by. For example, my tourism teacher would pick a random subject and then ask us to write a paper on it. My thought was, I don't mind writing a paper, but where is my textbook to study the subject? Where do I get the information I need to write a paper that I know will be on topic and pertain to our class?

This brings me back to Zambia where I wonder how difficult it must be for the teacher to teach without a text!? I can do it, and do it all the time with my girls, but I have access to the Internet where every subject a person could want (and even ones you don't want) are there with a click of a key. How do the children remember everything without workbooks to fill in, textbooks to study at home, paper and pencil?

You may be amazed to learn that while these children do not have the luxuries that US schools have (a desk to themselves, oodles of school supplies, textbooks, a nice playground, and so on), they are still eager to learn! Imagine how happy they would be for a box of crayons and paper of their own!! Or a workbook and pencil! These children appreciate everything, and take NOTHING for granted!

CHILDHOPE believes that education is crucial for development and one of the most powerful tools in breaking the poverty cycle.
CHILDHOPE puts in more in education than any other program area and works to ensure that children, young people and adults get the knowledge and life skills they need to realize their full potential. The school improvement program, which is part of our formal education work, delivers:
• Support to every aspect of a school essential in creating the best learning environment for children thereby providing adequate and appropriate teaching and learning materials for basic school children.
• Supporting education through the provision of school furniture.
• Child representation on every school committee and training of school management committees which are tailored towards making schools more transparent. As parents and children realize that they are key stakeholders in the running of schools, they will begin to take decision-making seriously and begin to demand explanations on the way their schools are run.

The sponsorship program will provide the child with school supplies, school fees, and many other essentials needed for a proper education. To sponsor a child, please visit out blog at: http://childhopezambia.blogspot.com/

Also, a question was asked about sponsorship payments. You do not have to use the "subscribe" link to sponsor a child. You can make the monthly payments on your terms every month by sending a paypal payment to macandmic@gmail.com We do have a spreadsheet that keeps track of donations, so we will know how much you have paid. Make sure to mark your payment as a "gift", so that paypal does not take out fees.

Another question I received is whether Child Hope Zambia will be filing for a 501c3 status. We do plan to do that. For anyone who has done this for their own organization, you know how costly it is. I am currently looking into how much money we will need to come up with to get this done. So far, I have come up with $150 for a company to prepare out LLC docs for us, $300 in state filing fees, and $200 to apply for the 501c3 status with the federal government. The total is $650, but I am not sure if I am missing anything.

The good news is that the IRS allows a non-profit 27 months to get the 501c3 status, and all of the donations up to that point would be tax deductible (as long as the status is approved). Very good news!