Before January ends, we want to give you a quick review of 2017 which was a milestone in the development of our association. On this day a year ago, I departed to Cambodia together with my daughter in order to visit the Safe House in Battambang.

It was a very interesting, inspiring and intense stay with the lovely Theavy Bun and her dedicated and friendly husband Patrik Roux and of course the children. My daughter read the Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry with the teenagers and took care of her greeting cards’ project.

Monkeys are observing us while we take pictures of the flowers in the temple.

Motifs for the greeting cards from Anna’s project wrapped with lucky bracelets made in the Safe House.

I worked on our Femmes des Rizières Project together with Theavy but unfortunately, the project has not been further developed so far. Volunteers for this project are more than welcome!

My daughter Anna was very impressed with her experience in the Safe House and I would like to quote her from her project report: ” I am speechless. Poverty is relative. The children gave me something which I cannot put into words and I hope that I was able to give back. I miss them and would have loved to get to know them better. (…) Now, when I hear other people complain about material things, I realize what a privilege it is to be able to complain about it.”

In the following months we were working on the development of the WeCare-Website and preparations for the tenth edition of the Susi’s Bazaar commenced.

On July 7th we travelled to Kenya for the groundbreaking of the construction of the farm. You can find our travel report here. Together with Manuela I visited the Massai community of Olpirikata which had dedicated 18 hectares of land to the project. The community gave us a very warm welcome and we tried to point out the importance for the Masai men to assume responsibility for the running of the farm. So far, the project has been a huge success. The population is buying the milk and in November the first calf was born. The second calf is due in March 2018 – we are looking forward to it! There are still some parts of the farm missing, such as the construction of the water reservoir and a lot of planting. We do have very high expectations when it comes to substantially improving the nutritional situation of the local population by arable farming. The planted Aloe Vera should also be commercialized and thus present a future source of income.

Our next stop was Ilsohion, where we decided to make the project “Nasaru – Masai Girls’ Learning Center” our next baby.

The girls of Iloshion who will benefit from the construction of the Nasaru – Masai Girls’ Learning Center.

In Tanzania we met lovely Mokili, who was able to have these beautiful ponchos made especially for us. You can order the ponchos (in many different colors) at the price of Fr. 120,- from us. Please send a mail to hello@wecare-association.com.

 

In November 2017 the 10th edition of Susi’s Bazaar took place and we were able to obtain a total of Fr. 80.000 for the Nasaru Project. A big thank you goes to all our donators and sponsors!

 

 

 

We have many ideas and projects for 2018: We want to launch a Scolarship Program for talented students whom we want to support and find sponsors for them. Furthermore, we would also like to launch an apprenticeship program for the restauration and hotel business – similar to the Swiss system. And, of course, Nasaru has to be built.

We are looking forward to a very exciting year! Stay tuned.

January 30, 2018