Good Tidings

Read all about it! Read all about it!  A lot has been happening in recent weeks with our aid shipments and with the House of Joshua so we have published a "Christmas Special " newsletter. You can find it by clicking here

Finishing Touches

The House of Joshua home for orphaned and abandoned children is almost complete.  Staff are now moving in the furniture and adding the finishing touches.

An application for the operating licence and various permits has been lodged with the Department for Welfare & Social Development.

Staff training starts in earnest next week so the first children could be moving in very shortly. Now all we need is some money to keep it running. Our main way of doing this will be through a child sponsorship scheme - please click here to find out more  Download Child Sponsorship Pack.

When the home is at full capacity (70-75 children) we estimate the running costs to be around £1,500 a month so we are going to need plenty of help!

Breakfast and Thanksgiving

I'm looking forward to Bacon Butties at Horringer Court Community Church this morning, before a special service when we give thanks to God for a year of fundraising for the House of Joshua.
Through social events, car boot sales, strawberry teas, barbecues, concerts, collecting tins, knitting scarves and just digging deep in their pockets members of the church have raised over £16,000 (as well as put on a few pounds round their waists!).
We are so grateful to everyone of you, especially Barry Eastwood who laid down the challenge to the church and got everyone fired up about it.

Habagat Relief Container Departs

Just over 72 cubic metres (7.8 tonnes)  comprising 40 pallets, plus a further 864 individual boxes, of medical supplies and equipment were crammed into a 40 foot high cube container at Aid to Hospitals Worldwide in Bury St Edmunds.
And when I say crammed I mean CRAMMED. At times a sledge hammer was used to budge pallets over by a few millimetres so the next one could be squeezed in. It took over 5 hours to complete the load because there was so much to get in and because tessellating the boxes correctly was so critical to making it fit.

 Cramming in the last few boxes

 Another pallet load is pushed up the ramp by the volunteer loading crew

A very big box to fill

All this equipment is going to Phillipine Relief and Development Services (Philrads) in Manila who will distribute it to other aid agencies and Barangay (district) Health Centres to provide medical support to the millions of people affected by the Habagat flooding in August when vast areas of Luzon were inundated by flood-waters after eight days of torrential rains.

Another Container of Flood Relief Aid

In August this year a typhoon, informally known as "Habagat", deluged the Philippines capital Manila, and much of the surrounding area with eight days of torrential rain.
90% of Metro Manila was inundated with flood waters affecting more than 1 million families with more than 6500 homes destroyed and many more damaged (according to Wikipedia).

In partnership with our friends at Aid to Hospitals Worldwide and Philippine Relief And Development Services (PHILRADS) we are working on shipping another 40 foot container of medical equipment to provide additional resources for hard-pressed Barrangay Health Centres and hospitals in the flood affected areas.

We hope to have the shipment on it's way within the next month.

flooding in Metro Manila August 2012

Aid Gone Down Well

There is no doubt about it, our recent shipment of medical equipment, school resources and tools has gone down well with the recipients and is already making a big impact on the lives of many people in Cagayan De Oro City.

A pastor of a church that runs medical missions in remote mountain areas, as well as working in some of the poorest flood affected areas of the city, wrote to express his gratitude,
"Words could not truly express our gratitude for such great wonderful help after
many years of waiting and praying for the loads of blessings for the brethren over
here. We are so blessed to have so many tools that will empower the brethren for their
trade or job such as carpentry, mechanics and plumbing. 

We are planning to have some job empowerment seminars and give those
graduate the tools needed to empower them. The sewing machines could be a great help
to those flood victims to get to their feet again especially those who lost
their husbands. They live on their own and they need help with sewing skills as a second part time job when there will be no employment available for them. 

About the computers; what a great help it will help to our  satellite kinder schools who don't have any access
 to computers. We also  gave some units to our school over here in the city.
Thank you for taking great efforts of gathering these tools which we know
can restore the dignity of poor families by being self sufficient to make
a living and help them break the cycle of poverty. Once again thanks a
million for such wonderful blessings. We don't have enough words to say it
but a BIG THANK YOU  for making possible what seems impossible! 

You help us change communities for Christ !

What's In The Big Box?

It's taken two years in the planning, paperwork and preparation as well as two months in the actual shipping  roughly 12000 miles from Bury St Edmunds to Canitoan Barangay, Cagayan De Oro City in the Philippines, but after various delays and difficulties along the way, our 40 foot container of medical aid  finally arrived at its destination this week.

Now it was time for the excited recipients to find out exactly what was in this great big box all the way from England.

Despite the full heat of the sun many willing hands spent hours carefully unloading and sorting the contents; 630 packages, 77 cubic metres in volume and over 8 tons in weight - a soft play room and specialist wheel chairs for disabled children, a full baby delivery suite for the local health centre, proper hospital beds, walking sticks and mobility aids, a dentist's chair and utensils, bandages, syringes and needles, autoclave sterilising machines, tools, computers, school books, boxes of blankets - so many boxes. Soon most of the basketball court was covered with boxes of equipment that will bring better health care to many thousands of people.

As well as showing their appreciation to us, and the other organisations involved in the container shipment, with this banner of recognition; the local barangay councillors and church leaders gathered together in a special thanksgiving service to praise God for all that He had done for them in the provision of such help in their time of need.
Canitoan Barangay suffered substantial damage in the flooding that followed Typhoon "Washi" last December and several families are still living  in an "Alternative Transitional Shelter  ( the partly built  new medical centre building) in the background of this photo, until new permanent homes can be provided for them. In the meantime the equipment that we have supplied for it will be put to good use in the old medical centre at the other end of the village.

We too thank God for allowing us to achieve this, along with our partners Aid to Hospitals Worldwide, Rotary UK and Lifenet Children's Foundation. However a special vote of thanks goes to Bernadita Amor, social worker at Philippine Relief and Development Services (PHILRADS) who handled all the complex paperwork with all the different agencies and officials with great efficiency, tact and tenacity!

Latest Newsletter

Hot off the press our Autumn 2012 Newsletter is out now. Read  all about it!

Almost Finished- But Not Quite Ready

4 years in the planning and fundraising, 18 months in construction, the House of Joshua children's home is nearly complete at last.

Internal doors have been hung, windows glazed, plumbing and electrics installed.
This week the builders are just finishing painting, polishing floors and fitting kitchen cabinets.

The necessary licences are being applied for and staff are being recruited to care for the children.

 All that remains is to furnish and equip the downstairs rooms ready to turn this empty building into a proper home ready to welcome the first intake of 25 orphaned and abandoned children. About £3000 is needed to beds, toys, cupboards, tables, chairs, bathroom and  kitchen equipment and the like.
Any body like to help? How about sponsoring a room, or maybe just one or two specific items to go in the room? A list of required items can be found here

Once the home is open there will, of course, be ongoing running costs to provide for the children's needs and pay the bills. In Great Britain the government would provide funding but this is not the case in the Philippines so our partners,  Lifenet Children's Foundation who will operate and run the home, are launching a child sponsorship scheme. Click here for more information or visit the Lifenet website www.lifenetkids.moonfruit.com

A Long Time Coming

It has taken several months of hard work sorting all the paperwork to apply for tax exemption but at last our shipment of medical aid for Cagayan De Oro City, Philippines is on its way.

Packed with over 8 tonnes of medical equipment kindly donated by Aid to Hospitals Worldwide, and sent on its way today, the 40 foot high-cube container should arrive in early September to re-equip the Barangay Medical Centre at Canitoan where many of the people made homeless by last December's floods have been relocated in a massive tent city.

New, permanent, homes are being built in the area for the flood victims but the village medical centre has virtually no equipment with which to provide even the most basic medical care to its newly enlarged population (now approaching 30,000). Now it will have some of the best equipment in the entire city, including proper hospital beds, a fully functional  delivery room complete with ultrasound machine and resuscitaire, and lots more besides.

As well as medical equipment the shipment includes tool kits to enable flood damaged homes to be rebuilt and to provide a future source of income for those who have lost their livelihoods as well as their homes.

It has been a long time coming but it should be worth it in the end!

boxes of medical equipment and supplies

 Electric beds

Fully adjustable child delivery bed

A dozen ways to eat strawberries

Who doesn't like strawberries? 

A sumptuous 'strawberry tea' garden party hosted by John & Anne Zarattini was a magnificent, if somewhat indulgent, way to raise over £300* for the House of Joshua building fund. We even had some sunshine!


With strawberry meringues, strawberry shortbread, strawberry trifle, strawberry sponge cake (strawberry jam in the middle and strawberries on top), scones with home-made strawberry jam, strawberry cup-cakes or just plain strawberries and cream - there must have been at least a dozen different ways to eat strawberries!

Fund raising doesn't get much better than this!

*Including gift aid tax rebates

In The Groove

What a brilliant time we had last night! An evening of Jazz and Blues, hosted by Horringer Court Community Church, with Val Sinclair and the Pat Brandon Quartet providing the music.

Mary Rendon from our Philippines mission partner, Lifenet Children's Foundation presented a slide show about the House of Joshua and their work with street children during the interval, whilst concert goers munched their way through a mountainous selection of cheese, biscuits and fruit.

With donations adding to proceeds from ticket sales over £1200 was raised towards the House of Joshua building project. A huge thank you to everyone involved!

Jazz for Joshua

Come along to an evening of superb jazz at Horringer Court Middle School, Bury St Edmunds to raise funds for the completion of the House of Joshua  Children's Home.

Tickets available now!

House of Joshua The Final Push

Just yesterday we got the architect's costings for the fourth, and final, stage of construction at the House of Joshua. At almost 1.4 million Philippine pesos (£20,000) it is about £6000 more than we were expecting. We were a little disappointed but with the costings came photos of the roof trusses now being formed and the access road under construction; so we were not overly  discouraged.
And then this evening, completely out of the blue, Horringer Court Community Church in Bury St Edmunds decided to give us another £5,000 towards the project. In addition they are holding a series of fund raising events over the next few months specifically for the House of Joshua.
We are nearly there, and with the substantial number of orphans from the floods in December urgently needing a new home, we just need to give this one last push.

 Access road almost finished and electricity supply pole

Metal roof trusses being fabricated on site

End view showing roof trusses February 2012

Artists impression - what it should look like when finished

Thanks For Flood Donations

We have been amazed by the generosity of our supporters who have donated more than £7000 for emergency relief for flood victims in Cagayan De Oro City enabling us to fund a feeding program, provide basic domestic equipment such as cooking utensils, cutlery and sleeping mats as well as purchase some building materials for repairing houses.
In addition readers of the Bury Free Press newspaper article in Bury St Edmunds Suffolk have donated over a quarter of a tonne of sheets, blankets and tinned food for shipment to families in need.
Thank you to everyone who has made all this possible.
Our main priority now is to complete the House of Joshua Children's Home to provide accommodation for some of the hundreds of flood orphans.
The access road has been built and with electricity now connected to the site work has commenced on fabricating the welded steel roof trusses.
About £14,000 more is needed to get the house ready for habitation.

House of Joshua November 2011 - work is now proceeding to construct the roof

The Philippines Red Cross has estimated the cost to communities of recovering from Tropical Storm Sendong as 262 million pesos (£4 million).

"More than a month on from Sendong and at least 223,000 are still living in emergency shelters, with host families, or in makeshift conditions. It may take a long time for these people to get back into permanent homes, and they will need our support in the interim," said Richard Gordon, Chairman of The Philippines Red Cross.

We continue to support a feeding program and outreach, especially to children living in the tent cities at Canitoan and Agusan.

Sendong - a Month On

It is almost a month since 'Typhoon Sendong' devastated Cagayan De Oro City with catastrophic flash floods that killed over 2000 people and destroyed thousands of houses.

Still many thousands of people are homeless. Many are still staying in schools, basketball courts and other public buildings. At a number of locations large 'Tent-Cities' have been set up with tents provided by Shelter Box Charity and Rotary International. In due course permanent houses will be built on the same sites but official sources are saying that it could take until 2013 to complete this work.

Cooking for 200+

In the meantime our Mission partners, Lifenet Children's Foundation Inc. have joined forces with several other organisations and local churches to continue providing hot food to some of these evacuees. We have been pleased to provide funding for this and more money will be sent in the next few days.

It is estimated that around 1000 children are now orphans as a result of the floods and the local authorities are hard pressed to find enough people able to care for them. So we now need to push on and get the House of Joshua children's home completed as quickly as possible to provide a loving and supportive home for some of these children where they can receive help and counselling to start to rebuild their lives.

We need your help and we need it NOW! If you are able to please, please click on the donate button on the left of this page and give whatever you can afford.

£25 will feed 200 people for a day or pay the wages of one of the workmen building the House of Joshua for a week. £2500 will buy the roofing materials for the house but even just £5 will make a significant difference.

We promise you that the money will be spent well and wisely. We have no paid staff and virtually no overheads so everything you give will go where it is needed the most.

More photos of the aftermath of the floods and the relief efforts can be found via our Facebook Page

Local Newspaper Publishes Appeal

T.C.R.C.T trustee Jo Conroy, who is also logistics manager at Aid to Hospitals
Worldwide, with some of the boxes of aid to be shipped to the Phillipines

Local Newspaper for West Suffolk, The Bury Free Press has covered the story of our efforts to provide relief to flood victims in Cagayan De Oro City appealing for it's readership to contribute tins of food and blankets as well as money to help with the costs of shipment. Read the full article here

Sendong Aftermath Video

This YouTube video from some friends of ours shows some more images of the aftermath of Tropical Storm Sendong and the efforts being made by numerous charitable organisations and even groups of private individuals to try and bring some help and comfort to the flood victims.