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We are currently supporting 330 children as well as several aid projects. For this we have annual donations of about 130.000 EUR at our disposal. Over the past nineteen years we have supported more than 4000 sponsored children, and donations are only used to help those who are really in need, and this policy will be maintained in the future, too. Over and above the actual sponsorship programme we have in recent years supported four aid projects which we are particularly concerned about: the Bethlehem Receiving Home orphanage,the Antonie Day Care Center for children, the Welcome Home Foundation disabled children’s home and school for the deaf, and the MED-Project health care project.
Antonie Day Care Center
The day care centre was founded in 1994, to promote the mental, physical, and social development of children of pre-school age (2-6) and so finally to prepare them for a self assured, independent life in society marked by tolerance and social responsibility.
In addition, the parents of the children cared for in the kindergarten are able to go out to work. In the day care centre pedagogically and medically experienced social workers take care of the well-being of thirty children daily. They teach the children about important topics such as nutrition, hygiene, and health education in a lively and interactive manner, promote motor and creative abilities with the aid of drawing, music and movement games and the use of toys. Of course, all the children receive a balanced diet at the Antonie Day Care Center. The positive trend is such that in the meantime the parents are becoming integrated in the educational aims of the institution and are being encouraged to take an active part.
Yes, I would like to support this project.Bethlehem Receiving Home Orphanage
The Bethlehem Receiving Home orphanage was founded almost 15 years ago in the house of Salvacion Tinsay, Bacolod, Villa Valderrama.
The first children were Lili, today 15 years old and adoptive daughter of Isolde and Uwe-Jens Schumann, and a little girl called Maria, who was adopted by an Australian family. Salvi Tinsay had some rooms in her house rebuilt for this purpose and employed three children’s nurses to look after the babies round the clock.
So far about thirty small children have passed through this orphanage. These are mainly babies left behind in hospital by their mother straight after birth. Or they were babies who were given up to Salvi Tinsay by their natural mothers because they could no longer afford to feed their children.
There are no state grants for the Bethlehem Receiving Home, because official orphanages exist. The latter are extremely poor, the children lie almost piled up, get hardly any attention and lead an existence in structures resembling cardboard huts. Salvi Tinsay oversees her project with a great deal of warmth and love. She has often had the opportunity to hand over the children to "other care", but she has only ever agreed to an adoption when everything was completely "watertight".
That is why most of the children are still in the Bethlehem Receiving Home today: eleven children between the ages of six and thirteen. They are sent to school (a primary school has been set up on the Tinsay property), they receive further training (the first have already started), continue to live in the house and are looked after. They are well brought up and are extremely happy.
Uwe-Jens Schumann, who as initiator of the Bacolod Patenkinder Association and as adoptive father has been in on the project from the word go, has a vivid example of the effectiveness of the Bethlehem Receiving Home: "A few years ago I was in Bacolod again - and in the children’s section of the Provincial Hospital. On one of the (singularly dirty) beds sat a tiny child, eighteen months old, weighing only four kilograms, blind in one eye from starvation-induced oedema ... Lorenzo looked like a completely shrivelled, ninety year old man. His mother, quite corpulent, stood next to him fanning him fresh air. I sent for the doctor who said:
"Let him die in peace, he will have passed away by this evening, we can’t help him anymore ..."
I spoke to Salvi Tinsay, who immediately dispatched a doctor to the clinic who collected the child and month by month nursed him back to health in Tinsay’s house ... -
Today Lorenzo is a big lad, blind in one eye ... but otherwise no ill effects remain. His natural mother gave her permission for him to stay at Tinsay’s. Recently I received a letter saying that Lorenzo had finished school with particularly good marks. I am very, very proud of him.
I think that nothing can demonstrate better the admirable work of Salvacion Tinsay and her Bethlehem Receiving Home project. She is a lady whom I admire because she never wanted only to observe, although this would have been a much easier way for her... I trust her as I trust my own family." Because of their age the children and young persons are now hardly suitable for adoption and will probably grow to maturity as a small community in the care of the Bethlehem Receiving Home.
As they get older the annual costs of feeding, health care, education and accommodation are rising. Every year we must face this financial challenge anew. Photographs .
Yes, I would like to support this project.
Welcome Home Foundation for disabled children project
http://www.welcomehomefoundation.com/
Welcome Home Foundation is a special home for poor, disabled children on the outskirts of Bacolod city. The day care centre and home gives girls and boys the chance to learn to read and write in spite of their disability and even to complete professional training. In most cases the children and young persons live in the centre during the week and return to their parents’ home for the weekend.
Many of the children are deaf mutes and get the chance here together with their parents, after years of silence and misunderstandings to communicate with one another, because the parents can learn sign language with them and are also helped by social workers to solve everyday problems.
The project was begun by the Filipino Salvi V. Tinsay and the Irish priest Father Joe Coyle, sadly, since deceased. The children and young persons are helped and supported by social workers. They learn to live in a community, with its good sides and its bad, and to help one another. In the Philippines it is not really possible for a disabled person to get a job, but with her Welcome Home Farm Salvi V. Tinsay has managed to give young people a chance, to be almost completely personally responsible for providing for themselves financially. On the Farm the disabled persons produce hollow blocks which are sold to local construction companies. There is also a small chicken farm.
All the proceeds go to support the project. The Welcome Home Foundation relies on donations from the people of Bacolod, and some of the costs can be met through sponsorship by foreign sponsors, but a regular budget is unfortunately not available.
Yes, I would like to support this project.
MED Project, health care project
Since 1997 the MED Project has looked after the health care of a total of 520 people (sponsored children plus two family members for each child). This includes a yearly general medical and dental check up, costs of medicines, vitamins and hospital care. As in the past most illnesses can be traced back to poor or deficient diet caused by poverty and to bad sanitary conditions and poor hygiene.
In order to guarantee good health conditions for all children in the long term, it is important in this area as well to involve the parents in this aid project.
Yes, I would like to support this project.
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