We had a lot of fun on Friday taking a lesson with year five at Horringer Court Middle School - talking about life for street children in the Philippines and our plans for the House of Joshua children's home.

They asked a lot of really good questions about the implications of living rough on the streets in poverty as well as about bugs, creepy-crawlies, snakes and the like!

This forms part of an ongoing plan to develop cultural links between the school and the House of Joshua so that the children can learn about life in other countries. It will also form part of the middle school's enterprise project - to raise money for charitable causes.

Later in the day the children did some more work based on our talk, which they were able to share with parents who came into the school in the afternoon.

Here's a couple of the beautiful posters that they made (the pictures are a bit fuzzy as they were taken on a mobile phone).

If anybody else in the Bury St Edmunds area would like us to do a talk please give us a ring or send us an email

An Amazing Year- Ahead and Behind

What an amazing year 2010 turned out to be!

We have just had our annual general meeting. The Trustees Annual Report made exciting reading. During 2010 our income went up by an astonishing 73%. Grants made to various beneficiaries, including our school sponsorship program, were up by about 10% and over £12,000 has been set aside for building the 'House of Joshua' children's home (construction work is due to begin in earnest on this project very shortly).

The first of our University Students graduated in 2010 and we have another two due to graduate this March. A further four students are currently engaged on university degree courses, with several more younger children also able to attend school thanks to their generous sponsors.

We were able to supply books, computers tools and medical equipment that enabled a significant number of people to learn new skills, find new ways of earning a living and improve their health. Many lives have been changed as a result.

None of this would have been possible without the help of our many friends and supporters. A huge thank you to every single one of you!

If 2010 was an amazing year 2011 looks to be even more so, particularly with the dispatch of a 40 foot ships container of medical aid bound for Cagayan De Oro City and Camiguin Island Province in early March. We anticipate that the equipment we are supplying will directly impact the lives of many thousands of people as we help them to access affordable medical care and improve the general health of the local inhabitants.

We hope and pray that this container will be the first of many.

You can read the 2010 Trustees Annual Report here

Crossing Biscay for the House of Joshua

In May this year one of our trustees, Andy Conroy, is planning to sail across the notoriously dangerous Bay of Biscay in a 45 foot yacht, in company with friends, to raise funds for the House of Joshua building project.

If you would like to sponsor Andy, or just to find our more about his trip please click on this link.

BISCAY OR BUST

There's a competition too - correctly guess how many miles for the voyage and you could win a prize.

Andy looks pensive during crew training session.

An awful lot of ropes to learn (and pull).

Yacht White Sands in harbour

Autumn Newsletter

Currying Favour

Thank you to the members of the 'G4G' House-Group at Horringer Court Community Church Bury St Edmunds who donated over £100 from a curry evening to raise money for the House of Joshua.

It all started when one of the group members got a whiff of a curry cooked by TCRCT Trustee, Andy Conroy and said ' That smells delicious, I'd pay money for that!'

Before you could say 'Madhur Jaffrey' a group social event was organised and 14 diners were treated to 5 different curry dishes and all the usual accompaniments.

Congrats and Thanks

Guests pin money to the dancing newly weds

Congratulations and a huge vote of thanks to John and Sarah Lloyd, married on Saturday 31st July.

Instead of having gifts at their wedding John and Sarah asked their guests to contribute to our House of Joshua fund-raising appeal through a 'money dance (A Filipino tradition where guests pin money to the bride and groom during their first dance).

With Gift Aid tax rebates over £1500 was raised to take the building program forward. Thank you to everyone, and especially the newly weds, for their incredible generosity.

Get Your Own Back on The Taxman

This week's budget won't have pleased many people with a rise in VAT to 20% from next January and deep cuts in welfare benefits and public expenditure. Apparently the average family will be around £400 worse off as a consequence.

However the tax man has certainly made me smile this week by paying a nice fat cheque into our charity bank account - just over £3079 in Gift Aid tax relief on donations made to the charity by our supporters and child sponsors. That will certainly hep our budget as we prepare to send a 40ft ships container of medical aid and tools to the Philippines later this year.

So the moral of this story is that if you give to charity and are a UK tax payer please sign a gift aid declaration. Until April 2011 it is worth an extra 28% to the charities you support and won't cost you a penny. Somehow paying tax doesn't seem quite so bad if you can redirect some of that tax back to causes you believe in. It feels like you're getting your own back on the tax man!

If you support this charity you can download a gift aid declaration here.

Hot News

Read all about it! Our latest newsletter (spring 2010) is hot off the press. Read it here

Urgent Delivery Needed

Delivery room - Canitoan Village Health Centre

We are back in the Philippines to catch up with some of the projects that we are already involved in and to meet with new people to discuss whether we may be able to help them.

Today saw us visiting the village health centre in the Barangay of Canitoan - just a couple of miles outside of Cagayan De Oro City - which serves a growing local population, currently of about 15,000 people with bassic maternity care, dentistry, family planning advice and an immunization program. The local church pastor explained that many of the residents are subsistence farmers who struggle to make ends meet and for whom it is difficult to afford proper medical services.

The midwife proudly showed us two little rooms that she uses and where she has now started to do deliveries instead of sending expectant mothers to one of the large hospitals or private "birthing homes" in the city centre.

In the larger outer room stood a simple wooden slat bed with a foam mattress where women who are in labour can wait. In the tiny inner cubicle, measuring about 7 feet by 5 feet, is a single delivery bed (with it's cloths stained with dried blood) and a couple of old wooden tables with plastic table cloths and a small collection of instruments in a two bowls, plus a bucket on the floor and an angle poise lamp. On the wall a hand drawn chart gives a guide to cervix dilation sizes so that the midwife can gauge the progress of the delivery.

We asked the midwife what happened if two women were in labour at the same time? "We would make a space on the floor for the other one!", she said simply. I was unsure exactly where the space could be made, except in the outer room!

Outside in the office, on a table, lay the only sphygmomanometer (blood pressure meter) for use by 13 health workers. Unfortunately it was broken and they have no money to replace it.

We urgently need to get a couple of midwifery delivery kits into this centre and, in the longer term, we talked with the Barangay councillors and the midwife about the possibility of providing more medical equipment. The acting head of the council (now in his early seventies) explained that in 1998 they had a five year plan to establish a "mini-hospital" for the village but 12 years on they still had not been able to fulfill that dream.

Our desire for 2010, with help from Aid To Hospitals Worldwide, is to ship a 40 foot container of medical aid to this area, and it seems that this little clinic at Canitoan would be an ideal recipient for some of that aid. Who would like to help us make an old man's dream come true?

Radio Gaga Replay

I really enjoyed my time on Lesley Dolphin's show on BBC Radio Suffolk. I know that a number of our supporters were able to listen in but for those who missed it here is an edited version of the interview.