Utange Baptist Primary receive their lamps

The pupils and staff chosen to receive this first batch of solar lamps were given them at the final assembly of the term. I loved seeing the photos. Unfortunately two pupils chosena s recipients were absent, but they will be given the lamps on their return.

I sent labels to be stuck on all of the lamps:

 The teachers were presented with their lamps by Mr Nathaniel.  Their pleasure is clear.

 Then it was the turn of the pupils.

All of the recipients.

Lamp collections: St Peter the Rock

It was very exciting to receive photos from Pastor John Kahindi in utange of the teachers from various Utange schools collecting the lamps I had bought for their teachers and pupils. One of the schools I have donated to is St Peter the Rock School.  Here, able bodied students are educated alongside physically and mentally disabled youngsters.  Their school motto is "Disability is not Inability".  Two teachers from the school came to collect their schools's set of ten lamps:

 The smiles on their faces say it all.

Florence receives solar lamps

Florence set up Noah's Ark Academy in Utange, Kenya, in two rooms of her own house initially, turning one wall of the house into a blackboard and educating up to 50 2 to 8 year olds from the village.  Since then, fundraising has enabled three classrooms to be build, along with a toilet block and a kitchen area to produce two meals daily for the children attending.
My own fundraising (from the sale of my denim items) has enabled me to give Florence 10 solar lamps for the school this year, and e hope to repeat this annually.  5 are for staff at the school; as a teacher I was struck by a comment that sometimes not enough parents pay their children's school fees, and so Florence cannot pay the teachers.  I was also impacted by imagining myself trying to keep up with planning and marking without light in the evenings - I don't know how I would manage.,The remaining 5 lamps are for the pupils who have made the most progress this year.  I wanted them to go to children who were not necessarily the most academically able pupils.

Florence picked up the solar lamps last week, and these photos show her unpacking them.

I'm hoping for photos and information at a later date about the individual recipients. My prayer is that the lamps will provide hope to them.

Solar lamps - stage 2 accomplished!

So, the first stage of my project has taken another step forward today.
You may remember that I ordered solar lamps from Sunny Money - the trading branch of the charity Solar Aid - last month. I placed an order for 40 of these lamps:

I chose to do this in the hope that the lamps would enable students to study, adults to work in the evenings - something we take for granted, but something which is impossible for most of those living in bush villages like Utange, where electricity is rarely available in ordinary homes - and if it is, that electrical supply often fails for days on end. 
Ordering the lamps was not as straightforward as I hoped, largely because English banks require additional proof that the money is being used for legitimate purposes and not for terrorism.  The transfer seemed to take a long time, but did eventually happen, and today the lamps were collected from Mombasa:

40 solar lamps now in Utange, waiting to be distributed to 4 local schools and then to pupils and staff (5 of each) in each school.  My intention is to make this donation annually.  Next update will hopefully include information about the recipients.

I am into more detailed planning for my trip next year now.  If you are interested in joining me in Utange at some point during August and would like information, please leave a comment and I will contact you.

Exciting times!

I am so grateful to have made a new contact at Bromham Show last week.  Lance Haggith, from Sports Traider, came over to my stand and made several fabulous suggestions.  The first of these has already started to become real; he brought over a pile of brand new jeans for me to use for the items I make.  These are jeans confiscated by Trading Standards, as they are "designer ripoffs" and passed on to Lance; some have now been passed to me.  This afternoon I began cutting them up.  Here is the first set of pockets removed from the jeans, ready to be remade into pocket bags and then sold to benefit Utange.

Thank you so much, Lance!

Phone cases

I have been given some lovely fabric by friends who visited Africa recently.  The fabric they brought would have cost at least four times the price here, and it is lovely to have fabrics reflecting the charity I am supporting with my creations.  So I wanted to use the fabric as a feature rather than "just" as a lining.  They are not huge pieces - fat quarter size or less.  Here are my first set of creations using some of the fabrics.

These simple phone cases have a pocket at the front with a false binding - made by cutting the lining longer than the main fabric and pressing in place.  I was low on these and several people at recent sales have been interested, so it was time to replace them.  From the top and working in rows, cases 2, 4, 6, 7 and 8 all use African fabrics.

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