Christ Gospel Fellowship Church
of Rwanda
Child sponsorship in partnership with Itafari Foundation
2010 annual update
Click here FOR THE PDF VERSION WITH PHOTOS
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Another year of hope
Dear friends and partners,
We want to thank the good Lord for yet another year of growth with the Itafari Foundation. The country has generally been at peace throughout the year. We successfully went through the presidential elections and nothing disrupted the peace. The few grenade blasts that went off in the Kigali city were finally put at halt.
The sponsorship of the almost 200 children continued and nothing has disrupted the implementation of the planned activities under this ministry. Numerous achievements continue to be realized in the areas of education, health, psychosocial support and spiritual growth. I was recently going through some pictures saved on my laptop and came and among them were of Fiete. I quickly remembered how terrible she looked in 2007 when we enrolled her into the program. Everyone notices how much she has changed compared to how she was when we got her into the program.
Fiete (12 years) was brought to church by her mother in 2007 and sought her registration into the sponsorship program. The burns she sustained when she fell into a pan of boiling porridge were still fresh and still undergoing treatment. It is unbelievable to see how a combined treatment, better diet and counseling to both herself and the mother are undoubtedly the reasons why Fiete comes among the top performers in her class. She continues to study hard to realize her life dream.
Many other children like Fiete have been reached.
All the achievements, right from the beginning are being made possible by a strong partnership. In that regard, I would like to thank our sponsors, community members and the staff for making this happen.
Francis Mutabazi
Senior pastor
Christ Gospel Fellowship Churches of Rwanda.
CONTINUING THE TREND
1. Education
With the funds received from the Itafari foundation, we continued to provide education opportunities to all the sponsored children. It was great joy last year in December when the primary leaving results were out. All the 18 of our sponsored children who sat for the primary leaving examinations passed and are all attending different secondary schools.
Heroes: The current grading at the primary leaving examinations came into force when they were in P6. Despite the change, they successfully passed and came into the first grade.
We have no doubt that this great achievement was made possible by an existing approach to provide the best quality education to all our sponsored children. At other levels too, most of our sponsored children perform equally well.
Vocational training
Jean Claude Kalisa is not on the list of children who are sponsored but during her visit in his family where she sponsors two other children, the Itafari President and speaker Victoria Trabosh was touched after knowing that Claude does not attend school. From that time, she started to pay for his education and presently attends a vocational training school where he specializes in motor vehicle mechanics. Two other sponsored children attend vocational schools.
2. Emergency and relief
Food: Next to education, food comes next on our budget spending. Our expenditure on food rose by about 19% compared to last year’s. This is due to the increasing food shortages experienced this year. The floods that destroyed the food crops in April and May this year in most parts of the country greatly reduced the crop yields during the July – August crop seasons causing acute food shortages in the country. Most of The food that comes into the country now has to be imported from the neighboring countries including Uganda and DR Congo. This subsequently affected the food prices which rose from 60% last year to about 66%.
We cannot definitely provide food to all our sponsored children’s families throughout the year but our contribution in all these circumstances creates a very big impact. We always want to do whatever is possible to reduce spending on relief but we continue to get limited as families of our sponsored children continue to get hit by food shortages.
Shelter: The 17th day of June came like any other normal day in the life of Claudine and her family. She hadn’t returned yet from her work at the church where she is a cleaner. The children had also quickly returned from school to take on their routine chores; fetching water and gathering firewood. But on return, their grass thatched house was all in flames. The neighbors had gathered as if to just watch but what else could they do? No single attempt was made to either stop the fire or pull out some belongings. Victoria Trabosh who sponsors two children in this family (Nadia and Samuel) was quick to respond. She raised donations to buy basic requirements and also to rent a house.
Claudine, the mother, with support from the church, has now been able to put up another temporally shelter and will move into it as soon as she gets the funds to complete it.
3. Sponsor visits
This year, we have been privileged to receive two sponsors visiting. We hosted Sara Oberdorf who is one of the itafari board members and Vicky Trabosh, the Itafari president.
When the sponsors came, they had fun with the children, gave out gifts and had other good times together. (download the pdf mentioned at the beginning of this article to see the pictures!)
4. Food security:
The unique food challenges affecting the families where our sponsored children come from together with other community members is an issue that we started to address this year.
While the goats continue to multiply, families that do crop farming (like for 91 Theoneste) will soon have better gardens and yields like the one below.
In an effort to deal with the challenges, we selected guardians/parents who come from areas where they do crop cultivation and took them on a study tour to an area in the east of the country. We took them to different farmers who practice better agriculture and shared their experiences with them. We have given them some facilitation that included improved seeds and equipment in order to help them improve on what they do in their crop farming. Out of this, we expect them to get better yields at the end of the next crop season that comes from November to December.
5. Other gifts
Emmanuel was overjoyed the day he received a gift of a mattress. He quickly tied with a little string before he carried it on his little head and headed home. He had never slept on a mattress before. When David went to visit the family recently, he took him around the house, to specifically show the bedroom and the mattress.
All the children received mattresses for their Christmas gifts last year. It was joy all over; the children and their guardians/parents expressed their gratituide over the gifts. Some sponsors were also able to give more than the mattress and the party. It was all nice.
Thank you for making your sponsored child special. Children who are not sponsored can easily be recognized.
Many of the Children who have not been privileged to be part of the sponsorship program are among the children who don’t go school and stay at home to look after animals or to do other chores including taking care of their siblings.
Enormous thank you to all of you who make this program a success. May God richly bless all of you.
Pastor Francis Mutabazi and the staff of Christ Gospel Church
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