You have been great! The outcome of the auction has been amazing! We raised 1715 EUR and all thanks to you. This will definitely make a huge difference for the children in Malawi and for their families too.
Let’s start from the beginning…
Your generosity and the variety of the offer we manage to add to the auction was awesome. Both private people and companies reacted positively to our plead of support. Many other of you followed with the same spirit and purchased the items that were on sale. Not only that! Most of you also paid for them immediately after the auction was closed. We are also really grateful for the fact that we didn’t have to chase you!!!
What’s next?
By now most of you should be in contact with the person/organization that provided the item you successfully bid for. The time to enjoy what you purchased is coming up!! If you like, we would love to receive pictures from you (while enjoying the item/experience you bought). If you agree we will send it to the kids so that they can visualise in an easier way all what is being done for them and also who are the people who support them. With your permission we will use those pictures also on our website/facebook page to raise a bit of awareness on Marajowi and spread the news. Spreading the news is of course something you can do as well!!
What about the money raised? How are we going to use them?
It is maybe a bit boring, but we thought the easiest way was to make a bullet list of it. Hope you agree! As said, we raised 1715 EUR (the highest amount even in a fundraiser by the way). These will go to:
– Bandawe School for the Hearing Impaired (where Malita stays). They will get the equivalent of 190 EUR to guarantee a portion of meat per week for a full trimester for all the 66 students currently enrolled. They will also get the equivalent of 300 EUR to be able to give all the 66 students, 3 glasses of milk per week. The rest of the week the students have access only to nsima (cassava flower) or beans. On rare occasions they get rice. So, though this might seem little, it actually is a great contribution to their diet.
– Kattie, one of our girls. We will use 271 EUR to pay her school fees for the next trimester. The silent auction was not originally meant to fund this, but since we don’t have sufficient funds for it at the moment, we thought we could make an exception.
– all our kids (Ramos, Witness, Joyce, Kattie, Gift and Malita). They will get an extra 15 EUR for Christmas. We are sure they will use them to buy something they really need (and like). On top of this we are also preparing a box full of clothes for them (like every year). More on this in the coming days.
– all the families of our kids. They will receive the equivalent of 30 EUR to buy some food for their Christmas celebrations. This is something we have done also in the past and we know this is something deeply appreciated by them. These families (made up of 10 or more children) do not often have the resources to cook a proper meal for Christmas otherwise. If you are wondering what a proper meal is, in most of the cases the money will be spent to buy rice, cooking oil, some tomatoes and (depending on the amount of components of the family) some more. The only exception to this will be Malita. Unfortunately she doesn’t have a family to go to during Christmas. No one is waiting for her at home. By now her school is her home too. We are discussing with Stuart (the school principal) how to best arrange things for Malita this Christmas, so that she can also enjoy a bit of the spirit of it. We will keep you posted.
– Clement and his family. For them we have an extra rich allowance this Christmas, corresponding to 150 EUR. This is our way to show to Clement our gratitude to all what he does for and with the kids. Without him Marajowi would not be able to survive. We know Clement is trying to build a proper house for his family, but in these last months they have been struggling to keep even the basics going. We know that with approximately 400 EUR, Clement could complete his house. Unfortunately we are not able to support him this much, but we hope that this will help him go a step further.
– Peter from the Saint Maria Goretti for the Visually Impaired. Peter is the principal in the school. In October, after a lot of efforts, he had to close down the section of the school who takes care of visually impaired children, because he had nothing to feed them with. With the issues going on at governmental level, state owned schools (like this one and Bandawe) are struggling to get their funds paid. Saint Maria Goretti received nothing this year. We hope that with a contribution of 100 EUR, Peter will be able to support at least a few of his students and help them build some skills for their future lives.
At the moment we do not have a large buffer for the months to come. As a consequence, we have decided to keep the remaining money (464 EUR) as buffer to cover any eventual unexpected expense.
Once again THANKS TO ALL OF YOU FOR MAKING THIS POSSIBLE! It was an amazing auction!
