Nearly every week we have grandmothers coming to plead for assistance to take care of their grandchildren! It is our greatest joy if we have some funding available to help because the money designated for this purpose is exhausted. The greatest need is to assist them with funding for school fees, school uniforms, and books. We supply these items for the people who accept orphaned children into their homes in the 0rphan Foster Care Program. However, there are several really precious grandmothers that come for help when they get desperate. Several of them are such kind and lovely folk you cannot turn them away especially when you hear their stories of what happened to their children.
Currently we have 75 children in our Orphan Foster Care Program, which consumes most of the funding available to care for grandmothers who find themselves in stressful situations. We estimate that there are over 600 widows in Gembu!! Out of the list of 112, I was given a list of 12 elderly grandmothers who's day to day existence and survival depends on the goodwill of churches and people in the community. As the HIV/AIDS pandemic continues, there will be fewer sources of help to keep them alive. I was just praying about how we could do something to keep them a little more comfortable by supplying food and firewood along with assisting them with the children they are required to manage. Some may be caring for great grandchildren.
We want to be careful to avoid setting up a welfare program that is so liable for abuse but at the same time these women that have worked so hard and should be retired and resting are once again called on to do so much. Your concern for the grandmothers in Nigeria is so commendable and I am sure it will bless the lives of many wonderful grandmothers who thought they have been completely forgotten with no one to care for them.
KELOWNA... The Kelowna Gifts to Grandmothers group creates tote bags to raise money to supports widows and grandmothers in Africa raising aids orphans.
The group has collected several sewing machines to be sent to Africa. The machines have been refurbished so they are in good working order. Preview the video courtesy of BC Daily Buzz.com.
