We were thrilled to recently be able to purchase some much needed supplies for Grace School. This is the school that the orphan kids who live in Grace Village go to. They also have several community children attending this school. The school goes from kindergarten through grade 10.

Grace School has several blind children attending. We were able to purchase 36 childrens books in Braille to send to them. These were so neat to look at, and hard to imagine that anyone could read! The blind childern at Grace can read Braille, and will be thrilled to get these popular childrens books that they can read all by themselves!

Grace School expanded to include high school students this past year. They requested supplies to help set up a science lab. They had a microscope, but needed just about everything else. We were able to purchase test tubes, beakers, microscope slides and a couple of science kits. This will give them a good start to their lab.

We are so excited to announce that our first school has finished the first phase our our project with them. Here are the results.

This may not look like much, but it is renovated classroom. They were able to buy new supports and most importantly, a tin roof. Prior to this, the classroom roof was made of branches. A tin roof will allow education to continue to take place no matter the weather.

They were also able to start on a brand new classroom. We believe strongly the schools should not just be given handouts. To this regard, this project worked exactly how we had envisioned. We did not give them enough money to finish the project, so they went to their local education ministers and were able to obtain the rest of the amount needed to finish the classroom. The government was more than happy to give them the partial funds needed to finish the classroom off. We are currently waiting for their proposal for their second year. The second year they will need to propose something that is income generating.

River of Hope held its second annual Kids Fest fundraiser on March 19, 2011. It's a fun day of carnival games and food. This year we had a magic show and a live animal show. We also do a Chinese Auction that is always a big hit. All the proceeds will benefit the schools we work with in Ethiopia.

 

Our second M-bag was shipped out today! We were able to ship 3 huge, new encyclopedias, 5 science workbooks and 54 children's books. Again, all of these books came from our local school. We're so thankful that they think of us! They provide us with more books than we can ship! For those that don't know, an M-bag is a huge plastic, burlap type bag that you load the books in. Only media or printed material can be shipped this way. It' the cheapest way to ship, which isn't saying much, because it is still costly. Grace School will use what they need and then parcel out the rest to area schools that need them.

On August 17, 2010, we were able to send out our first shipment of books to Grace School. Most of the books were textbooks that were donated by our local school. We were able to send 50 textbooks in a variety of subject areas. Grace School received these books in less than two weeks! They were thrilled with what we sent and said that the students would definitely benefit. Thanks to LaBrae for thinking of us when getting rid of unused textbooks!