27 September 2010
Just over a year since the project began seems like a good time to reflect, count our blessings and reassess the continuing needs of our work here. We are grateful to all our supporters. As you join hands with us, we are seeing improvements in the lives of the children, their teachers, the workers we employ and many other seemingly casual bystanders. May God bless you for the part you are playing in this.
Blessings
- We have reliable and well-motivated teachers, and an enthusiastic local community.
- The pupils have more books and their reading is improving.
- 127 children are now sponsored.
- Funding is available to pay monthly salaries and wages.
- Thanks to the Beit Trust, building has now started on the new classroom block for grades 8–9.
- The Rotary Club of Canberra has pulled out all the stops to complete a matching grant application for the water project.
- The Limapela Cedric’s PTA has taken the initiative to make bricks for a staff house.
- Generous donors have provided funding to connect the electricity.
- Another generous donor has given funds for a new children’s playground.
- In January we expect our first volunteer, Thomas Duxfield, to arrive from New Zealand to help design and build this playground.
- The Websters and the Raymonds have enjoyed good health and are now comfortably installed in the completed guest houses.
- A hectare of land at the Limapela Farm is now being prepared for cultivation.
Needs and Concerns
Our ten-year plan for Limapela Cedric’s School envisions a school of 500 pupils from pre-school to grade 9. To achieve this, the building programme will need to continue each year for eight years. Attaining satisfactory academic standards for our children is a challenge, requiring sustained work with our Zambian teachers. We need sponsors for more of our students, many of whose parents struggle to pay even the nominal fee of NZ$8.50 per term.
Thousands of other Zambian children in the Copperbelt Province alone do not have access to good schools in their communities. A Limapela primary and secondary school in the Baluba community where the Limapela Farm is situated is a future possibility. All this will require faith, funding, resources and personnel.
Self-sufficiency through agri-business profits has always been our aim, so that we can reduce dependency on overseas donors. Start-up capital is required, as well as funding to pay the next instalment on the Limapela Farm purchase. Zambians with skill and who share the Limapela vision are needed to help get the farming going.
Some of these challenges might seem impossible, but they are not. We believe in miracles, and we know that when miracles happen, cynics wonder and the needy are blessed.
—Matthew F. Raymond, CHAIRMAN