Double Satisfaction & Double Benefit
Last week we met SOS Children Zambia Director, Florence Phiri.
Florence explained that the difference a children's village makes is enormous. "When an orphaned or abandoned child comes to the village they are given a family - brothers and sisters and a mother to look after them. They have a home and can begin a new life."
For example, Florence described a baby girl, Namwene, who was abandoned at a police station. The police brought her to a children's village and since living there she has blossomed. Now 6 years old, Namwene is a beautiful girl who has grown in confidence - Florence recalled a day that she came in to her office and cheekily took some biscuits! Such confidence is an enormous change, to a child who was once vulnerable, but who now has a home and is free to walk around the children's village, her village.
We are supporting the building and running of a nursery school in a new children's village in Chipata, Zambia. In Chipata, the main town in Zambia's Eastern Province, there is a particularly high rate of family breakdown and child abandonment. Around 1 in 6 of all children there are orphans, compared to 1 in 12 in the general Zambian population.
The new village will give a safe and loving home for up to 130 children, and hundreds more will live there in the future. The nursery will provide day time care for 90 children, from the children's village itself and neighbouring communities. Florence explained that, "the nursery is important for early childhood education. It follows the principles of learning through play, so that the children have confidence as they grow up".
Florence left with a final message to pass on: "buy baby clothes at From Babies with Love because you will have double satisfaction! You will buy a great quality, organic product, and at the same time you help a child somewhere else - a double gain - please do that!"