What happened in 2013

The beginning of a new year is for us a time to look back at the actions we undertook in the past year and see how things went at the orphanage. For each of the SIWOL’s members, 2013 has been rich in events but we’re very happy to have been able to continue our support to the association, thanks to our donors’ support and donations. Many thanks to all of you.  

We are creating a new website which should be available online in June 2014. Our aim is to provide more online services, such as a direct inscription to the monthly newsletter, and to increase our visibility online.

Besides our monthly financial support to the orphanage, we are grateful to a newly married couple who proposed to the wedding guests to make a donation to Siwol. It allowed us to finance a specific project we wouldn’t have been doing otherwise: new toilets for the girls have been built! It is intended to increase the number of toilets in the house so as to facilitate access for the girls and gain in hygiene and comfort for all.

 Moreover, we recruited two volunteers to spend their summer time at the orphanage. Clémence and Julie are students from ESCP (Paris Business School) and they tailored their projects to fit in the previous ones; two projects were undertaken:

• Geography lessons (started by Céline in 2010)

•  A theatre play with the girls (a follow-up project of a musical play created in 2011 by 4 volunteers).

The girls learnt about Europe (France, Spain, and Italy) and acted in English in the theatre play. Sceneries and costumes were created both by the volunteers and the girls who enjoyed themselves cutting clothes and sewing their own costumes. We’re now looking for volunteers for the coming summer, hopefully to start a “dance project and support the girls in learning mathematics and sciences: please spread the word around you!

Prema Kundargi, who heads the orphanage, also had an intense year both personally (one of her daughter got married) and for the orphanage; here are her words:

“All our girls succeeded at their exams and most of them got an A+ at the final examination in April, some had a B+ ; but all of them are at the top of the class.

They participated to summer camps with the school where they learnt drawing, painting, dancing, singing and acting. They also learnt many things on nature, health and environment and had the opportunity to go on a tour. They really liked the summer camp.  

At the end of May the two French volunteers, Clémence and Julie arrived. The children were still on holidays when they came, which gave them time to adjust to their new environment before the children came back (from their families). Clémence and Julie made efforts to learn about the children’s past and their origin, which is really important. During their stay with us, our girls learnt a lot (….). It’s exciting to see how the children learnt the dialogues of the play which were in English! I didn’t expect them to perform so well and I was amazed and surprised on the day of the play. The volunteers really trained the girls well. The play was beautiful and it is a new success for our children. Two more volunteers arrived from UK at the end of July. They stayed only one month, but spent lots of time with the girls teaching them English and lots of new games.

We now host 30 children who go to school, and 3 other children who stay home with us. We were supposed to have only 31 of them, but two more came. It is a very complex story. Normally people ask me before they bring children in, and usually my answer is that we have no more place to welcome a new child. But in this case, an old lady came with two children without telling me before. She cried and didn’t want to leave the house. She couldn’t keep the two girls with her. The girls have a very sad story which shocked me a lot and I was confused about what to do: if I said no, I knew the lady wouldn’t able to take care of the girls. We decided to keep the girls. They cannot go to school at the moment, but they’re studying at home with us. We’ll see…

At the end of the year, we sent 16 girls for a 3 days tour. Due to the number of children we host, it is difficult for us to take them on a tour and so we rely on the school for this.

Thank you to all the donors. With your help, we succeed in doing something good for the children. With your help, the children here live a wonderful life. So thank you to each of you, with all my heart.”