News from Mufindi

Bob Ellis.  We were  very sad to announce, in January, the passing of Robert C Ellis. Bob was born in 1937, founder of Mufindi Orphans in the US who had lived an active and fascinating life in many parts of the world.  Bob and Mary were great friends of the Fox family in Mufindi, Tanzania and knew them years before he founded Mufindi Orphans in 2006 to support Foxes & Community Conservation for their projects in Mufindi. He retired from MOI in 2012.  He is certainly missed by us here and our sincere condolences to Mary, their daughters, India and Laura, with their son, BZ and families. https://www.tributearchive/obituaries/23431265/robert-charles-ellis

Blankets:  With your generous donations from our blanket appeal in December,  were able to buy some extra warm blankets for the children.  Great excitement as they collected their  blankets during the early evening as they arrived at the ICV! Thank you!

Visiting the leavers:  Uzia, the ICV Social Officer, and Dr Leena, our visiting volunteer doctor, checked all the children who had left the ICV. The majority over 18, as with Tanzanian Government ruling, orphanages are not allowed to keep any children of 18 years and over. Some of the younger ones also returned to families who were in a position to look after them again.

Here left to right are a few of the youngsters that have left: Kastory, his brother Kaisa, Blastus, Jesca with her grandmother and Edwin with Elia. It was found that some of the children needed items such as blankets etc., which was remedied.  They will remain supported with their education and all be regularly monitored.

Parcels: In February, more parcels from Finland arrived containing a lot of clothes, socks, shoes, lego blocks, reading spectacles and sunglasses, for which we are really grateful.  Many thanks to all the donors involved in Finland.

*YAM Project: These four youngsters have already benefitted from The YAM Project. So far, they have received psychosocial and entrepreneurship training.

Foxes Community & Wildlife Conservation’s (FCWC) *Youth Agency in Mufindi, funded by the Helsinki Deaconess Foundation Institute (HDI) in Finland, is designed to help vulnerable and disabled children solve life issues enabling them to lead dignified lives and to help take control of their lives through improved motivation, skills and opportunities.

FCWC has implemented this pilot project in our neighbouring 16 villages, conducting outreach, needs assessments, rehabilitation, carer training, psychosocial support, agricultural and forestry training, entrepreneurship training, and wherever possible also help address gender equalities. Our hope is that once the project is shown to be successful in addressing these needs it is likely to be replicated in other parts of the district, region and country and we will be working closely with local government wherever possible advocating equal development and opportunity for vulnerable children and young people.

16 disabled children so far (10 planned) have received need-based rehabilitation, checkup, treatment, and supportive devices for those who needed them. It is a proven success and there are many disabled children who attended the rehabilitation who are showing improvements. For example, we have a case study of Alvis Chumi who did not attend school because he was unable to walk, but after rehabilitation has now started to do so and he now attends butterfly class at our Igoda Children’s Village.

To achieve this, we have already established a Youth Project Team and are continuing in the process of establishing and strengthening Village Child Protection Committees, VCPCs, helping us to identify and deliver this project support and training and help solve the problems faced by disabled children and vulnerable young people

We are working with the UoI – (University of Iringa) and TAPCAP (Tanzanian Association for Professional Counsellors and Psychotherapists) to help FCWC by providing expertise in assessing needs, psychosocial support, and the training of trainers while at the same time INUKA (Southern Highlands Rehab Centre) will be assisting us with addressing the rehabilitation needs of the disabled

Thank you for your continued support, it really means a lots to us and to all in Mufindi 

This is our giving page If you would like to be part of the children’s’ lives:

https://www.goldengiving.com/charity/orphansinthewild

For more regular posts please see:

https://www.facebook.com/OrphansInTheWild/

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