Are you interested in being part of Flying Mission's work in Botswana?
Here are several ways that you can help:

Because of the impact of AIDS, children are often left in precarious environments: some children are left living alone to fend for themselves, other children live with overextended relatives who have needed to take in more children than they are able to care for, and so on. Flying Mission partners with several remarkable child care centres that provide a nurturing place for these vulnerable children.  As our partner centres do not have permanent funding sources, they continue to persevere through their own hard work and the generosity of others.

Flying Mission is committed to helping our partner centres make sure that the needs of these children are being met. Some of the ways Flying Mission would like to help these centres is through:

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Little Seeds Caregiver Training
(#0753L)

One of the biggest challenges that Botswana day care centres dealing with orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs) face, is sourcing enough funding to cover their costs. An effect of this funding crunch is that the centres need to rely on volunteers as care providers. Using untrained volunteers to teach children who are already at risk leads to significant developmental gaps which affect their ability to succeed at school and later in life. When care providers are trained in basic child care, teaching and counselling, the quality of care that the OVCs receive is greatly enhanced. Pleaes visit the Little Seeds programme description on the FMC Partners page to learn more.

For 2009 Flying Mission would love to see 20 new volunteer care providers trained in Early Childhood Development, and 10 of the former trainees go through advance training so they learn how to pass this knowledge on. These training sessions are very thorough and include eight weeks of training stretched out over 18 months, regular site visits for personal feedback, and resources for the trainees to keep and use at their own centres.

Notes: Exchange rates are estimates and will vary depending on the market conditions at time of training.

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Winter Clothes & Shoes
(#0753W)

 

The winter months in Botswana are very cold and the concrete houses and cement floors provide no insulation. Many OVCs do not have warm clothes or shoes to help them bear the unavoidable chill. Every year Flying Mission distributes new track suits to all the preschool children at Tumelong and helps to locate shoes for the children who don’t have any. As they have no other warm clothes, it is not uncommon to see some children wearing these suits every day during the winter season. For other kids, these are the only new clothes they ever own.

 

Right now the clothes and shoes for Tumelong are paid for through the generosity and entrepreneurial activities of Flying Mission staff. Will you help us see that children at all our partner centres receive this same blessing?

 

What just a little can do:

• One pair of shoes: 25 pula / $3 / €2.50
• Track suits for 50 kids:  1,500 pula / $200 / €150
• Blankets, suits, & shoes for 50 kids: 3,750 pula / $500 / €250

Notes: Winter items are usually purchased in April and distributed in May so that the children have them for the May through September winter months. Prices and exchange rates are estimates and will vary depending on the market conditions at time of purchase.

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Support for Day Centre Needs
(#0753C)

Because FMC’s partner day care centres are run without tuition fees or significant government funding, the money needed to care for so many children comes from an array of places: churches within the centre’s community, Batswana with a desire to see these children succeed, and compassionate friends around the world. A few of the typical, every day ways this donated money is spent is to feed the children, buy teaching and play materials, provide the teachers and helpers with small monthly stipends, and keep the electricity turned on.

While the day centres’ staff work hard to provide for the children’s needs, without the generosity of people like you, it would be impossible. Please help us provide for the daily needs of hundreds of orphans and vulnerable children.

What just a little can do:

• A soccer ball for the kids to chase: 50 pula / $6 / €5
• An afternoon meal for 100 kids:  400 pula / $50 / €40
• A year of electricity for one centre: 2,000 pula / $250 / €200

Note: Exchange rates are estimates and will vary depending on the market conditions at time of purchase.

The Lifeskills Programme encourages youth to live lives of character and to remain sexually pure by empowering out of school youth to become peer educators. Please visit the Lifeskills Programme page to learn more about how the programme works. Because of the global economic situation, the Lifeskills funding levels are significantly lower than usual. This budget cut means that Lifeskills does not have the funding to hold any peer educator training workshops this year. So as not to lose momentum with the hundreds of youth impacted by Lifeskills, Flying Mission is trying to obtain funding to hold up to four workshops this year. Each training workshop is five days long and trains up to 30 participants to be peer educators as they learn how to effectively communicate HIV/AIDS information, to combat peer pressure, what the Bible says about decision making, and presentation skills.

Notes: Exchange rates are estimates and will vary depending on the market conditions at the time of donation.