Our Tamaraneh fundraiser was held on January 31, 2009 at the Ukrainian Hall in Edmonton. Our lively Master of Ceremonies, Augustine Marah, entertained the crowd with stories, poems and inspirational quotes while participants were treated to a joint Jamaican/Sierra Leone meal and a slide show of project developments. For the fundraiser portion, a group of Sudanese youth from Abbottsfield enacted skits from the life of villagers and school children in Sierra Leone illustrating our funding needs. Skits covered several themes:

• Teacher salaries at only $120.00 per month, not arriving for several months at a time because of inadequate funding
• Lack of text books, sometimes 10-15 students to one text book in each subject matter.
• Lack of school furniture; students sit 6 to a bench intended for 2 or bring logs or benches from home.
• Water well fights: the well is insufficient for the school and village and has long line ups from surrounding villages, we need to dig 5 more wells to address the urgent need.

After costs, thanks to the generosity of Edmontonians, our fundraiser made $17,000.00. In spite of the recession, we doubled our profits from this fundraiser up from our last year’s profits.

But the struggle continues…we are still short $8,000.00 to meet our financial commitments to the two schools and water well construction for Romano Village.

You can help!

Become an ongoing donor by giving a monthly amount of your choice, earmarked to the issue of your choice. Contact Change for Children to make arrangements for this (lorena@changeforchildren.org).

OR

Use your own creative talents and social network to raise funds for one of the above themes and send a cheque to Tamaraneh (address is on our Contact Us page). We will put your name and event up on our web page and you will receive a certificate of acknowledgement for your contribution.