BMHC Update
Bonnie Memorial Children’s Home: The trench was completed yesterday. This was created for the rainy season, making a pathway beneath the wall of BMCH compound for the rushing waters to flow down the hill without causing damage.
In response to the ‘felt need’ of amputees, we did a one-time project called ‘Ship Hope to Africa’ from 2010- 2011. Soldiers had been compensated for turning in weapons, but those who had been perpetrated received nothing. As a result, a team of countless Omaha volunteers in schools, churches and community groups spent an entire year gathering donations, doing inventory and finally sending a metal shipping container across the sea, so that every single amputee across the nation of Sierra Leone would receive something equivalent to the ‘gifts’ soldiers received for walking away from the war. Samuel Menyongar and his dedicated team distributed these items to each and every community.
One such place was Newton Amputee Camp. When boxes were unloaded there, the community elders brought up their concern about many children who were becoming orphaned as their amputee parents died in great pain from blood clots. This initiated our first children’s home and adjacent school in the Newton community. Being a teacher herself, it caught Katja’s attention that classroom instruction began before the building’s walls were even complete, with just a tarp in place of the roof. Such eagerness to learn made a deep impression.
Building projects have expanded into the Kondie Farm community as well, where Samuel and Mariama Menyongar reside. Mariama is the principal at the school which continues to expand. Students helped carry cinder blocks and bags of cement up the steep hills each day in order to cut down on costs for construction.
In light of the ebola outbreak in 2014, we began construction of a children’s home adjacent to the existing school.
Other opportunities:
Bonnie Memorial Children’s Home: The trench was completed yesterday. This was created for the rainy season, making a pathway beneath the wall of BMCH compound for the rushing waters to flow down the hill without causing damage.
For anyone interested in contributing supplies for us to carry to Sierra Leone at the end of the school year, clothing, and shoes are the LOW priority item because they just got some for Christmas. Everything else is preferred. There are 35 kids at Bonnie Memorial Children’s Home and hundreds of children at the school.
More gifts have come in for School construction! We have nearly $7000 in new giving for Mahabama, Sierra Leone. Hundreds of lives will be changed. Kids who never had the opportunity to go to school before will now receive opportunity through education.