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I was fortunate enough to visit Kenya in 2006 as a safari tourist, then return in 2007 to visit Ndandini Village with school supplies and food for the village. To see the villagers face such a hard life every day - walking up to 10km to dig in a dry river bed with spades, in holes deeper than they stand, looking for contaminated water to carry home in plastic containers is very humbling - especially when we waste more water cleaning our teeth once or flushing the toilet, than the Ndanini villager would have available for a family's daily needs.
Due to the AIDS devastation there are so many single mothers and grandmothers and orphan children who are struggling so hard.
The children who can, go to school, and frequently have empty tummies - they sang to us "take my freedom but give me Education" - we all know that they all deserve food, clean water, education AND their freedom. Their school has fewer supplies than any of us have in our own home. Our small group donated school supplies, food, and left promising to help. We have donated mosquito nets for every villager, and some funds for school lunches - the immediate need is for a well and we have arranged to pay for the survey. But the cost of drilling the well and ongoing support to continue feeding and educating the school children and empowering the villagers to develop a sustaining life style needs more than our small group can manage.
This is an awesome philanthropy program whereby anyone can help knowing that 100% of what is donated, be it ever so small or ever so large, goes to the project - now how can it be any easier to help a small child, a mother who lost her husband to AIDS or a whole village to find a constant uncontaminated water supply that they can rely on and within easy walking distance each day?
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