Liberian Orphanage News
Joseph and his wife Alice have created a self sustaining Liberian Orphanage that is also a school by day for 300 village kids too. We purchased 5 quarter acre lots, we built an orphanage step by step on this land. Our Volunteers there are builders and so they built the orphanage, they dug a deep well with a huge hand pump, they have 120 chickens and 12 goats. They built bamboo bridges for the village kids to be able to get to school across marshes and creeks. They have a sewing business with 4 treadle sewing machines and 12 people (adults and orphans) now know how to sew and we have 12 schools currently interested in ordering their school uniforms from the orphanage to self sustain it and help these kids. Four schools ordered last year!! We need 8 more sewing machines so each person has their own machine, in order to fill that many school uniform orders anticipated. The machines are $250 each, so we need $2000. We also need to buy the material for the uniforms and so we need funding for that until that business can stand on its own and have money from the year to purchase the material for the following year.
Our Volunteers there that are the builders also do building contracts that they get paid extremely poorly for because they are not licensed contractors. They can build anything, they are totally competent. In order to be licenced contractors and make decent money we need to pay for the contractors license and buy a truck, a cement mixer and other tools. This is so important. Once they are contractors and bidding on big jobs, they can train some of older boys on construction to give them jobs once they are adults.
Also Alice is taking hair braiding classes that she is teaching the orphans as this is another source of income and another career opportunity for orphans in the future.
We have 6 quarter acre lots loaned to school for all their sports events that all the kids recently helped to clear the land and we can buy those lots for a very good price if anyone would like to do that!!! We bought 30 soccer uniforms (called football in Liberia) so far for the kids.
We were donated 8 acres of farmland by a local farmer to grow crops and all the crops flooded in last years terrible floods in Liberia so we need seeds. The villagers are donating seeds but we need much more. That was the devastating blow last year, to lose all the crops. We can also purchase those 8 acres but until we do they have loaned us them for 8 years.
Recently Joseph’s sister graduated from nursing school and she brought two other nursing school graduates to join our Crusade with her and we are raising money to build them a medical clinic with bedrooms for the nurses attached to the clinic. We need to buy them beds and bedding too. Until the clinic and bedrooms are built, the three nurses will live in a local village. So we need just to provide mattresses and bedding ASAP for $240.