| MISSION: To provide interdisciplinary daily programmes of optical care for HIV/AIDS children and create income-generating projects for their caregivers and related persons.
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| VISION: To replicate Morning Star day care centres in the surrounding townships/informal settlements of the Matjhabeng Free State Region of South Africa. To expand our Income Generating Projects so that additional jobless infected/affected adults can become self-supporting. |
| PRIMARY GOAL: At Morning Star our enthusiastic staff team strive to give the children optimum care and supervision in the form of nutritious meals, appropriate medication, plenty of mental stimulation and lots of love. A preschool programme exists each morning for the older ones while the babies are being bathed and fed. Our great desire is to help change the lives of as many small HIV/AIDS children as possible, and, where funding is available, assist their families too. |
| Important dates: 4Sep08 - Annual General Meeting 5Sep08 - Fundraising Dinner 13-15Oct08 - Sea Trip |
July2008
- MORNING STAR AIDS STATISTICS: Gogos Club meeting: |
Up-to-date news on Morning Star... updated every month
| 16-21July2008
July2008 Newsletter update ... Dearest Friends It has been freezing cold here for the past couple of weeks with frost at night and a sneaky, icy wind during the day. The children have sometimes not even been outside to play because of the extreme cold, and have played games and watched DVDs inside. They think it is all quite fun to be doing something different, and the kitchen staff have made them a few special treats for their afternoon snack, so who cares about the cold?! They have warm clothes to wear sent out from overseas, their tummies are full, and so they are perfectly happy. God has been merciful to us this winter.
Only one little girl has died since my last newsletter and she died
within 2 days of being added to our register! 7-year-old Rorisang
came to us one Friday in a shocking state! When I saw her for the
first time my heart just wept for her. Her face was potted with
awful sores, her ears looked as though they were rotting off and
she just sat at my desk, with her eyes closed, rolling her head
from side to side. She was so obviously in pain – and moved
and walked with great effort. When her grandmother informed me she’d
had these sores since 2007, I wanted to throw something at her!
Grandma claimed she’d not known about Morning Star, which
is why she’d not come to us earlier, but to think that NOTHING
had been done for this small girl, all this time, simply infuriated
me. What she looked like was pure neglect! Our sickest children are all on the road to recovery. Praise God! Mmasabata has recovered well from her bout of meningitis, is up and about and awaiting discharge from hospital. Shiwe Mbebe, more recently admitted with congestive cardiac failure is, thankfully, getting stronger by the day and Solomon Molete, with spinal TB, who was taken by ambulance to Bloemfontein to have his massive spinal abscess drained, is back home and doing fairly well. 15-year-old Joyce Motshepe is also brighter these days, but still no-where near as healthy as she was just 6 months ago! Please continue to keep all 4 of them close to your hearts and in your prayers. As ever, the problems associated with
poverty, unemployment and ill-health are ongoing! There’s
ever someone new crying on our doorstep! If it’s not hunger
and disease then it’s a flooded shack or theft of one’s
meager possessions or an abusive partner or rejection as a result
of being HIV positive! We also have several children experiencing
abuse in one form or another right now. It’s always difficult
to ascertain exactly what is going on at home and we have to rely
mainly on how the child behaves at Morning Star, what neighbours
are saying and then evaluate carefully when home-carers tell their
sides of the stories!
...newsletter continues... click here for full newsletter...
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| SECONDARY GOAL: We have broadened out services to address the immense poverty problem that exists in the Free State Matjhabeng region. Besides our own Food Gardens Project, and our monthly food parcels to impoverished families, we have also been able to initiate an incomegenerating project called "Tshedisanang", as sotho word meaning to comfort and console, at our premises. More than 20 women all infected/affected by HIV/AIDS themselves, meet each weekday to work on their papermaking and embroidery skills. As resources and funding permits Tshedisanang and our other income generating projects will be expanded. Ongoing training will be possible, additional equipment purchased and many more impoverished men and women taken on to the programmes to benefit from them. To witness formerly hopeless people filled with the desire to make the most of their lives and be glad to wake up each day is incentive enough to continue with the important work we are doing. |
| "It
is all because of Morning Star that I have learnt to understand and
give courage to people who have been affected & infected with
HIV/AIDS." Meriam Moreboli, Morning Star Care Worker |
Morning
Star Quotes continued... |
OBJECTIVES:
- To provide little
children infected with HIV/AIDS the opportunity to reach a measure of
their potential before their untimely deaths
- To deliver support to their families
- To create jobs for their mothers/carers -
To ensure the Organisation is sustainable over the long term
- To promote and demonstrate Christian values
Morning Star Quotes...
- I like
to thank God with this two children because I saw the grace of Him and
His power to these children. I didn’t thought by this time this
children will be alive.
Now Goitsemang is walking like other children. It’s an amazing grace.
I still have hope that one day Rorisang can walk like Goitsemang and other
children. Goitsemang is a good example of ‘Tshepo ya Bophelo’
– ‘Hope of Life’ that a child who have a virus of HIV
can do everything like other children if a parent can give him care, support
and networking to accept his child.” -
Care Worker, Morning Star, Welkom
"The sea is a nice place. I want to see it again one day." - one of the children, Morning Star trip to Durban, 2007
RECENT ACHIEVEMENTS - 2008:
- Registration of
our satellite day care centre in Kutlwanong Township for 45 children;
- building a new hall in Kutlwanong to cater for these children;
- 40 Teenagers were treated to a day at the Gold Reef City;
- 17 more children graduating from the Morning Star Centre's at end 2007
and have started Grade 1 a school near their homes;
- the imminent registration of our primary school children infected with
the virus who are too ill to attend normal classes;
- Recent prize-giving of our 5th Annual Vegetable Growing Competition
in surrounding Matjhabeng Townships
