Donut Fundraiser!

Hi, this is Tammy, from Canada. My sister Melissa works with Beyond Ourselves. We, my mom, my two boys and I were excited to partner with Beyond Ourselves and have our second annual donut fundraiser which was held Thursday, January 23rd. Last year everyone was so generous and we were able to purchase a pair of socks for every child in their three schools. This year the funds would go towards sending students to high school. (They were handing out 40 scholarships but still needed funds for 17 students.) $120 would send a student to school for a year or $10 would cover a month. I posted our fundraiser on Instagram, Facebook and sent out an email and knew God would do the rest. 

My boys loved helping last year and I took them out of school for the day again. School is very important but we loved the fact that they wanted to give of their time and help, with nothing in return other than being able to bless others. Plus we knew that if it was anything like last year, we would need their help:) We started Thursday morning and the orders kept coming. By lunch time we had 26 dozen made. We quickly realized we would have to add a second day as we could not get all the orders done in one day. My mom made all the dough, Cole and Kade helped roll out the dough and cut all the donuts. I fried the donuts and got the orders together. We had a very good system going and it went smoothly. We kept working and the donations kept coming in. People were so generous it brought me to tears. One lady didn't want any donuts, but wrote a cheque to send 2 children to school. Amazing. At the end of the day we had made 44 dozen. 

 

What was also exciting and unexpected was that there were a few teachers who ordered donuts for their class and used this fundraiser as a lesson to teach about the importance of giving as well as teaching them about Zambia. Well done teachers!

Monday morning my mom and I were back at it. Excited to see what God had in store for the day. We were already blown away at our donations. It was around the same number we had finished off at last year and we still had a whole day to go. We had received orders for 14 dozen donuts but knew we could easily make more. We felt we couldn't say no to anyone who wanted to help and give. So I once again posted on Facebook and Instagram and at the end of the day we had made 33 dozen donuts. We smelled like donuts, we were covered in flour and icing sugar and oil splatters, but our hearts were overflowing. A huge THANK YOU to everyone who donated!! Together we helped change the lives of 17 students, who will now be attending high school!

Some of the boys that received a scholarship!

Meet Ivy Nkhoma

Mike sat down with Ivy Nkhoma this week to chat her work at Kawama School….

I would like to thank Ivy for taking time out of her work today and having a chat with me about herself, her family and her time at Kawama Community School.

Ivy has lived in Old Kawama now for eight years.  She has four children; her son Ezra (28) and daughter Dora (25) live in Lusaka, while her other son Buya (22) and daughter Eunice live at home with her along with one grandchild. Ivy is a widow and previously worked selling items on the local market. It was here that she got talking to a regular customer, Pastor Caphas, from the church at Kawama School.  She explained how difficult she was finding it financially to support her family from the uncertain and irregular income she made at the market. Pastor Caphas offered her a position in charge of the sanitation and Ivy jumped at the chance of a regular income. This was exactly three years ago in January 2013.

When asked about her interests outside of work and school she smiled and said with a family house to run she doesn’t get time for things like that but I know Ivy really enjoys cooking and reading, especially her Bible, as we have spoken about that in the past when I have chatted to her.

Ivy says she loves working at the school and is very impressed with the way that the staff there are so professional and work hard with the children. It makes it such a happy and delightful place to work. Being a family person she also enjoys working in close proximity to the children.

Ivy busy completing some of her admin duties

One of her proudest moments happened at the end of last year when she was approached by Mary, Head Teacher and Pastor Cephas to ask if she would like to take over the newly created role of Administrator rather than organising and undertaking the sanitation side of Kawama School. She told me that she could not believe she was being given the chance. She is now relishing the challenge of the completely new role and working with Mary to free her of some of the paperwork and meeting parents so that Mary can concentrate much more on the teaching and training of teachers role.

Ivy with Catherine Louvend and her children Abigail and Frank who

have just started at Kawama

When asked what would Ivy like to see happen now she had no hesitation in coming out with “to ensure that the children’s education continues to get better and better”.

We are really pleased to see Ivy move into this new position. It has been one of our highlights to see Ivy grow and take on more responsibility at Kawama School. We hope we can empower more people from the local community surrounding all our schools to reach greater things.

Restore Community Church Team

We’ve had a small team of men from Restore Community Church with us for the last week or so. Peter, Don and Tim came to visit the team here in Zambia and also feed into some of the beginning of the year activities that take place at the schools.

Last Friday we did our first ever altogether staff day with the staff from all three schools we work with. It’s been on our heart for a long time to do something like this, to gather everyone (teachers, cooks, security guards, and directors) for a day together. Friday we all met together at Greater Joy School for a very hot(!!) but wonderful day of worship, prayer, and teaching from our visiting team. 

 

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday of this week we’ve been doing staff training days at each individual school. We’ve been looking back at 2015 and reviewing the successes and challenges and thinking and praying about 2016 and what we plan on focusing on and working towards this year. 

 

It’s been great having the team here from Restore to help us facilitate the days. We only hope they’ll come back again soon :)

We Have A Visitor - Meet Elizabeth!

We hope you had a wonderful Christmas and a happy New Year!

This year will be another exciting one. We have several new projects we’ll be working on whilst continuing training and mentoring teachers and leadership staff at the schools, daily school meals feeding nearly 1000 children, visiting and encouraging vulnerable families and hosting several teams and visitors who add into the work we do here (just to name a few!)

And one of these visitors has already arrived! We have a new gap year girl (gapette!) who has just arrived in Zambia and will be with us for the next few months. Meet Elizabeth!

                            

Elizabeth will be contributing in the day to day workings of Beyond Ourselves and will be specifically helping those pupils who are less able in literacy and maths, giving them a much needed boost.

We asked Elizabeth a few questions and here’s what she said…

Who are you?

I’m Elizabeth Flynn. I've just finished my A-Levels at Forest School and I’m currently on my Gap Year before I hopefully head off to Uni next year!

Why did you want to come to Zambia and work with Beyond Ourselves?

When I was looking for something to do during my Gap Year I heard about the Gap programme they have here to do three months in Zambia and help out. I’m really interested in seeing how other people live their lives all over the world and combining that with liking what the Beyond Ourselves team are doing out here it wasn’t too hard to decide this was what I wanted to spend my time doing. I also really wanted to come to Zambia to experience another way of life compared to my own back home.

What are you looking forward to doing here?

I’m really looking forward to getting involved with the schools and being with the children and

seeing how they learn in different environments. I’m also looking forward to getting to know the rest

of the Beyond Ourselves team and spending time with them and helping out where I can.