Thursday 25 August 2016

Transforming families

We are glad to bring you an update of one of our supported families. The child is Jackyline Gato. We mentioned sometime back that we spotted her when she had dropped out of school and had lost hope of ever getting an education or worse still, ever achieving anything worthwhile in life. That was way back in 2010. Well, the story is quite different now; not just for her alone but for her whole family.
Its a family of 7. They should be 8 but unfortunately her younger sister of 12 years passed away a month ago after a short illnss. We found this family in such abject poverty that it was a struggle for the girl to keep up regular attendance at school even with our support because they could fail to get soap to wash her uniform sometimes. At other times it was failure to buy water which meant staying home that day. We are talking about items that cost about a third of a dollar or even less!

Its due to their unique setting that we have now added an extra touch to the mission of empowering this family. Beyond supporting the child in her overall growth, we have helped the mother to start a small scale income generating project. We have been preparing for this for sometime and we thank God that the mother is proving very hard working and ingenious in handling her business. We are guiding her on how to manage it well.
She is pictured below with some of the food she sells at their local market ( Thats sugarcane behind her, we couldnt picture the other items because the other users of the market didnt seem eager to appear in the photo!) standing with her is Jacky's younger brother.

We shall continue to do this with all families one at a time.
She can now afford a smile as she is beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel.

Many thanks once again to our sponsors because its because of you that this transformation is taking place in these families.