| August
17th, 2005 |
| Dear friends of the Irente Rainbow School, |
| Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ! |
|
Most of you already know me in person or at least from former e-mails.
My name is Caroline Bidmon and since June I am the school advisor at
Irente Rainbow School. I am sent by the United Evangelical Mission
(UEM) and will be here for a period of one to one and a half years. |
| From October 2003 to September 2004 I already lived here in Lushoto as
a UEM volunteer. I was teaching Daniel and Michael Munga and was
working on the preparations for opening the Rainbow School together
with Rev. Dr. Anneth Munga. |
|
I am very happy and grateful that I got the chance to come back to the Rainbow School and work here for another period of time. |
| When I left in September last year the school had not started yet. I
don´t have words to express the joy I feel seeing the running school
now and all our happy and lively pupils. |
After a few weeks of vacation the school started again on June 12th.
That was actually one day late. Because of heavy rains the school car
was not able to pass the road from Irente to pick up our pupils. It was
not an easy task to inform the waiting pupils that the car would not
pick them up that day… But fortunately the next day the road was sort
of O.K. and we were able to start our daily school life. For the first
two weeks our school days were enriched by the presence of five special
teachers from our partner school Wichernschule in Minden, Germany.
They took part in the day to day school activities and exchanged ideas
and experience with our teachers and teaching assistants. They also got
the chance to meet the parents and visited some of the pupils in their
homes. The stay of the teachers from Wichernschule was a great gain for
both sides and we are very thankful and we will not forget the good
time that we spent with our friends from Minden.
|
| After two weeks the group of teachers was joined by others from the Diakonisches Werk in Minden. Besides many gifts for the school from
the Wichernschule and the Diakonia in Minden, the head Ulrich
Strothmann announced that the Diakonia will give 3000 Euro each year
until 2008 to support the Irente Rainbow School. |
| After 7 months of running the school, the head teacher and I will now
sit together and review the budget of the school to see if the
estimations that were made are somehow realistic. After that we will
know where we are, but I am very optimistic that our overall financial
situation is quite encouraging. |
| We are now working with our four teachers that are sent by the
government. Besides the head teacher Jahary Robert Shehaghilo, their
names are Margret Mwila, Nasson Hubert and Yassin Shehaghilo.
Unfortunately one of our teaching assistants has left us for private
reasons. The remaining teaching assistants are Maria, Frida, Nicolas
and William. They are joined by Michael Munga´s personal assistant
Elisabeth. Despite the fact that those five have no specific training
in working with intellectual impaired children, they are doing a
wonderful job and are very devoted to our pupils. |
| This week our volunteer Lena left us to go back to Germany. She lived
in Lushoto for one year and since March she worked full time at our
school. Our second volunteer Christine is also about to leave us to go
back to Germany this months after she worked at Rainbow School for
about five months. We have to thank both of them for their efforts and
their commitment and we will miss them here at Irente Rainbow School. |
 Irente Rainbow SchoolPlaying pupils at Irente Rainbow School |
| Again and again parents are coming to us from all parts of this country
to ask for help for their handicapped children. The need is very big
and even if we had boarding facilities it would be impossible to take
them all to Rainbow School. Being aware of the big lack of support for
intellectual impaired children and their families we want to start an
outreach programme as soon as possible. In June, Robert Shehaghilo and
I visited two villages in Lushoto District to meet some disabled
children and their parents. To prepare the outreach programme the first
task will be to visit the villages in Lushoto District in the next
months and try to find out how many children there are and what could
be the best way to help them. From those two visits in June we got an
impression on how this can be organised. There are about 175 registered
villages in the district, so you can imagine what piece of work it will
be only to find those children. But we know that they are there.
Wherever you go and ask people they know families with handicapped
children. Meeting those children and their families in the villages
gives us the proof of the importance of finding ways on how to help
them and gives us strength to start this work even if our efforts seems
to be “drops on a hot stone” (a German saying). |
Irente Rainbow School is on a very good and encouraging way. All the
support we get and all the doors that have been opened since we started
the plans for this school show us that God is with us and He really
wants us to do this work.
|
We thank you all so much for your support and for your prayers for Irente Rainbow School. May God continue to be with us all!
|
Many warm greetings to you all from Irente Rainbow School in behalf of all our staff members,
|
Caroline Bidmon
|
 Caroline with Ibrahim |
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