Category: Gifts of Hope
Coming soon! CLEAN WATER! Thank you!!!
We are really excited about our partnership with Ugandan villagers. For years they have had plenty of water in the rainy season. But then they have been drinking polluted water from rivers in the dry season. Cattle and other animals drinking in the river also use the water as a toilet. Then children and adults collect the polluted water for drinking and cooking. This results in serious illness, death and a grim level of child mortality.
Thanks to RSVP supporters we are solving this problem! We are are helping our Ugandan friends construct a water harvesting system. This system collects the pure rainwater in the rainy season and then makes it available to villagers in the dry season.
A massive underground tank has been constructed to harvest 300,000 litres of water in the wet season.
Water tank is 25ft below ground and then some above!
The underground tank was dug 25ft down and now has been added with another 7ft on top with brick work as seen here. The harvesting tank is now 40ft deep. The width of this tank is 7ft.
Underground water tank now ready for the lining.
Then solar power will pump the water to the overhead tank. Clean pure water will then be sold for a couple of pence for a 5 gallon water can to villagers. This small fund will be used for any maintenance – making the system self-sufficient.
Some of the beneficiaries who have been helping in fetching water for the construction work standing in front of the constructed Tank.
At £2,500 per installation, this is a REALLY efficient way to supply clean water in remote areas of Africa. RSVP hopes to install many of these Harvesting Projects.
If you want to get involved, please give a gift small or large here: Donate to RSVP clean water.
Rwanda house renovation
Before…
Thank you to RSVP supporters! Tears have been turned into smiles for a family living in extreme poverty. On a visit to a poor area of Rwanda earlier this year, RSVP mission leaders, Alison and Richard Fenning, met a family without hope.
The family’s home was crumbling. The roof was broken and the structure was falling down around them. They also had no food. Everything looked desperate.
Thanks to the amazing generosity of RSVP partners and supporters, we were able not only to supply food for the whole family, but completely rebuild their home including a new roof.
We can only do this with your great support and so we say THANK YOU to all who support us!
After
RSVP Mission of Hope
Setting off to Rwanda
This afternoon I drove my work colleague, Alison Fenning, and her husband and RSVP Trustee, Richard, to Heathrow. They are now in the air, enroute to Rwanda, for RSVP’s Mission of Hope.
RSVP’s Mission of Hope will include speaking to a gathering of women involved in prostitution, providing food and bedding for the poor in Bugesera, community outreach, food and bedding for the poor in Kayonza, speaking on National Radio, speaking in churches, lecturing in Bible School, leadership seminars, visiting in the slums of Kigali.
Many thanks to all RSVP Partners who have donated finance to make this trip possible. Thanks to those of you who, I know, will pray for Alison and Richard every day through this mission. Please pray for good health, especially for Alison who suffered a serious health attack on an Africa Mission last year.
RSVP has been working in Rwanda since 1997, when I first visited the country with my Rwandan friend, Charles Mugisha.
The story of those early days is told in the book Beautiful on the Mountains (available from RSVP). Since then we have helped build a school, built an orphanage which we continue to support every month, helped educate hundreds of children, feed street children and support vulnerable women. We have supplied tons and tons of food to the hungry, provided matresses and bedding to widows and the elderly. We have helped women out of prostitution and start small businesses.
I had hoped to join Alison and Richard on this trip but funds have not been sufficient. So I did my small part and drove them to the airport. We greatly value all who support our work in transforming lives in Africa.
We still need to meet the full costs of the mission and it’s not too late to make a donation, however small, to help us meet urgent needs.
Thanks for your partnership and support.
Can you help us look after orphans?
RSVP’s House of Mercy orphanage in Rwanda has been looking after 16 orphaned children for many years.
The orphanage costs RSVP about £900 every month. Most of this cost is covered by some very kind and generous sponsors who cover the entire costs of most of the children.
But we have a couple of children whose costs are not sponsored. This shortfall costs RSVP £210 every month.
That’s a tall order. But I wonder if there are any of our supporters who would just like to help us with a one off gift, or a small monthly donation.
Any amount will really help us keep these children housed, fed, clothed and schooled.
You can make a one off donation here.
If you’d like to take out a monthly support of any amount, download the Partnership Form here.
Thank you!
Uganda Medical Container Update
Derek Ames at the container loading in Ipswich
Thanks to all those of you who donated to the Uganda Medical Container. The container was loaded last week and has now been shipped!
Former RSVP Trustee, Derek Ames who as been organising all this from the beginning, was at the loading of the container in Ipswich.
We are grateful for the partnership between RSVP, Aid To Hospitals Worldwide and Tools With A Mission for making this life-saving shipment possible.
Most of the costs have been met and we calculate only a final £300 is required.
This equipment will really help establish the clinic in Mbale Uganda overseen by our friend Rev Charles Mellor.
Background to this project here.
Budget
A2HWW
- Deposit £120.00
- Delivery within UK £108.00
- Service Charge £693-90
________
= £921.90
TWAM Shipping cost £2,400.00
________
Total raised £3,230.50
Total Payments £3,321.90
Balance (-£91-40)
+ transport (and possible tax) in Uganda (-£200.00+?)
Gig night!
Charity Gig Night
supporting RSVP Trust and their projects in Rwanda
with
KAYONZA
Saturday 8th September
at West Row Community Centre
7:30pm – midnight
Tickets £10 including a light supper (Served 8pm)
There will also be a raffle.
Tickets from Sarah Bonnet
Email: sarahjbon@gmail.com
Bring your own drink and glasses
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Wilson Pickett, The Rolling Stones, Rihanna, Cilo Green
Alicia Keys, T.Rex, Sister Sledge, Florence & The Machine
Jessie J, Snow Patrol, Feeder, Amy Whinehouse, Billy Idol
Joan Jetts, Blink 182, The Monkees, Adele, Elvis, Duffy
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Uganda Medical Container 2012
Back in 1998 an RSVP team travelled to Uganda on a mission trip to a small community near Mt Elgon.
Don Egan, Adam Waller and Derek Ames (then a Trustee) spent 10 days with villagers preaching and teaching everyday.
Derek Ames had been our contact to this community and, after we returned home, Derek kept in touch with a clergyman in Mbale Uganda, who was looking after retired clergy and working on setting up a clinic for the poor in his area.
For the last 2 years Derek has been working on arrangements to ship reconditioned medical equipment from the UK to Mbale Uganda for the clinic project.
RSVP is helping with this project by raising the shipping and associated costs of about £5,000.
Over £2,000 has be raised so far.
We hope to ship the container late June 2012.
__________
Derek writes…
When I was in Uganda over 12 years ago I met an Anglican clergyman, Rev Charles Mella, who lived in Mbale and went on to set up a rudimentary health centre. He named this after his wife, Grace, when she died very suddenly in the night a few years later. The health centre has little financial income, so it is unable to obtain medicines. I have managed to send small sums of money and put Charles in touch with Christian suppliers, so he can obtain basic medicines.
More recently the health centre has been upgraded to a clinic, which is a great accolade, but there is a greater shortage of materials and now basic equipment, as more people come to the clinic hoping for treatment.
Charles and I have been put in touch with a Christian charity, Aid for Hospitals Worldwide, which supplies equipment to hospitals in the developing world free of charge. Charles has a list of 25 items, such as beds, laboratory apparatus and wheelchairs, which he will hopefully receive. Although the equipment is free, there are a number of costs to be met:
- Check, service and pack the equipment in a container.
- Transport in 20ft shipping container under the auspices of Tools with a Mission (TWAM).
- Transport from the ship to the clinic in Mbale, plus any possible Revenue and Customs taxes.
The estimated cost of the above is £5,000. We will be very grateful for any donation you are able to make.
Derek Ames
___
Some people are strong…
This lady really got my attention and moved me. All the time in the service I couldn’t stop watching her as she praised God and danced around. When it came to the time to pray for people at the end she came forward. I moved through the crowd and placed my hand upon her head. As I prayed for her, I felt her head had a strange indentation under her scarf. At the time I had no idea what it was.
As we were leaving the Pastor had set up some one to one sessions. One of the people who came to see me was this same woman. She wanted me to pray for her as she now lived alone. Prior to the genocide, in 1994, she lived with her husband and son who were killed on the site where the Church now stands.
She had a lot of grief and sadness and also had very little money to live on. The indentation that I felt in her head turned out to be an open wound, from a machete attack in the genocide – she survived and has to have the wound dressed each week. I was amazed at the resilience she had and that despite this she still praised God in a dynamic way!
We were able to give a Gift of Hope to her that brought some light into her darkness. Thank you partners.
Rwanda 2011
A few moments and people from the RSVP Rwanda Mission Trip. Thank you partners!
£80,000+ sent to Africa!
Our amazing RSVP partners and supporters have done it again! We are just working on our 2011 end of year accounts. One figure I always like to see is how much, in total, we sent to Africa for poverty relief.
Well today the figure was calculated and turns out to be a staggering £80,392. That is wonderful! So what did that money do?
It paid for Child Sponsorship for around 300 children – providing a daily meal, schooling, uniform, shoes and medical care. It looked after, fed, educated and clothed 16 children in our House of Mercy orphanage. It bought Gifts of Hope for people in urgent need.
It supported our partners Tom and Anna in Kenya as they minister in the slums of Nairobi.
It helped support the women in the Family Centre in Rwanda and fed hundreds of street children.
It also installed several water wells in Kenya providing clean water for poor communities.
In the current climate, I think this is fantastic. It is an honour to be part of the work of RSVP Trust, as it touches and transforms lives across the world.
Thank you to everyone who has contributed so generously to this life-changing work.
