A Happy & Peaceful New Year to all our friends and supporters

(click on 'collage' to enlarge)

14 Month Calendar for Educating Others

A fourteen month Calendar is being prepared for Educating Others, and this will be available from the last week of November. These will not be sent out by post because of the expense. For friends and supporters local to Rolleston on Dove, the Calenders can be obtained for £10-00 each from the Editor's home address - 31 Burnside, Rolleston on Dove, DE13 9DN. For other friends, the Calendar can be obtained in pdf by sending an e-mail to daveinuk@foxmail.com. Though the pdf downloads are free, it would be appreciated if a donation could be sent to the Educating Others bank account. Details of which will be found on the back page of the Newsletter.

To enlarge image and download in jpeg, click on each page of 
Calendar, then save to a folder on your computer.

Rose of Sharon - High School Magazine

The students at Rose of Sharon High School have produced a magazine, and we will be showing several pages from this. We will not print it all at once, but we hope you will be impressed by the professional way in which they have produced this. The reproduction is rather small, but if you 'zoom' in you will be able to read it perfectly.

LATEST from GUA AFRICA

We have recently received the following e-mail from Kate at GUA AFRICA

From: Kate Gumm
Date: 24/09/2010 11:23:25
To: David Yates
Subject:

re: Have you any news for me this month?

Hello David,

I hope you and everyone at Educating Others is well. This month has been a rather slow month in terms of developments with the Emma Academy Project. We are eagerly awaiting the funds that will see us reach our final fundraising target for Phase 1 so that we can see the 5 Primary School classrooms completed and in use.  Having said that, GUA Africa and our founder Emmanuel Jal have been invited to a World Bank Conference in early October and we are hopeful that this event might bring us some welcome news in relation to the funding for the classrooms.

Emmanuel Jal

Your members may or may not be aware that September 21st is the United Nations Day of Peace. To mark the occasion, GUA Africa teamed up with the UN funded organisation Peace One Day and organised a football match event promoting peace in the town of Leer, Southern Sudan. It was part of Peace One Day’s "One Day One Goal" initiative where they organise football matches in conjunction with local NGOs in some of the world’s most currently and recently volatile regions. GUA Africa was immensely proud to be able to facilitate such an event on behalf of South Sudan. The day was a huge success, with an estimated 4,000 people turning up to watch the match and to voice their support of peace in the region. In the first photo attached you can see one of the teams lining up for their photo with a home made ‘Peace One Day’ banner in the background. In the second you can see one of the teams being introduced to the Unity State Government of Southern Sudan Commissioner who came out to support the event.

On behalf of GUA Africa I would like to thank all of your members for their continued support of our cause, and in particular their extra efforts made this past month with your highly successful Coffee Morning. We truly appreciate the support you are giving to us.

 
Warm regards,

 
Kate Gumm
GUA Africa
www.gua-africa.org

UNEXPECTEDLY............ by Phithi

Normally I write an Editor's Letter for our Newsletter, but in our latest issue, Phithi, one of our Founders, has contributed his assessment of our first nine months.

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I always love to hear people using words and phrases like, “against all odds”, “unexpectedly”, “To my surprise” etc. Every time I hear these words, I always exclaim, “Wow, a determined heart and mind achieves what it never fathomed”!

When we started Educating Others, about 9 months ago, we never knew where the whole venture will take us. We just had one aim; to raise funds to reach children who need support for their education. We did not have money, sponsors, bonds, stock markets, cows, goats, houses, bank accounts and other things like that which you would expect anyone venturing into ‘supporting others’ have got to have. We only had our hearts, minds and drive. On top of that, we dressed ourselves with integrity and transparency and purposed that we will never use a single penny from the donations. It was a challenge, but we determined to try. We probably sang the famous childhood song, “try, try, try again. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again”. And trying we did, and today we are amazed at what our supporters and ourselves have managed to achieve.

Affording a child a decent education is the greatest gift one can ever give. It’s more than all the glittering gifts that we normally give to the toddlers every year, though there is nothing wrong with glittery toys. But education is long lasting, a child who gets it today will have it for the rest of their lives, and no climate change will ever erode it. However, supporting children’s education is never easy if one is to make it a lone venture without supporters behind him/her. 

Last month (August 28), we hosted our first ever coffee morning, asking our supporters to once again rally behind us as they have done since December 2009 when we announced our venture. People came in droves to support us and they were so determined and excited to make a difference to children out there. Their generosity humbled us, we never thought they would rally behind this worthy cause the way they did.  A child somewhere in Sudan and Zimbabwe is smiling because of the support that we have been offered. Our gratefulness to all our supporters is ever eternal; the more you support us, the more children out there are afforded a better future.

Educating Others has been buoyed by this support. Our determination and strong sense of duty, transparency and integrity has been rejuvenated once again and we are proud of what we have managed to achieve to this day. Out of all the funds that we have raised to date, ALL of it has gone to our beneficiaries: GUA Africa and Rose of Sharon, we stand proud in confirming that we have never used a single penny for stationery or printing costs. This is what we promised and this is what we are doing. Unexpectedly, Educating Others is managing to do what it set out to do. Of course, we thank our Trustees led by David and Brenda Yates, Father Michael Freeman and Father Timothy Ganz, myself and Kudakwashe Lionel Kupara. Our future is indeed bright the same way as the future of the organisations and children we support.

Phithi Ngcobo, 25 September 2010.

 

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The total raised at the Coffee morning on 28th August, was

£.483.53

In August, we also had a Donation to our cause from 

St. John the Divine Parish Church, Horninglow, Burton on Trent of

£.250.00

 

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"A SECOND MILE-STONE" for Educating Others

£.2000-00

With our September Donations to 

Rose of Sharon and Gua Africa Emma Academy,

we will have sent over £.1000-00 to each of these

worthy causes since we launched

Educating Others in late December 2009

Thank you to all who have so

generously supported us.

 Trustees

 Fr. Michael Freeman

Fr. Timothy Ganz

Phithizela Ngcobo

Kudakwashe Lionel Kupara
Ruth Cookson
Heather Taylor

Brenda Yates

David Yates

28 August - Our First Social Event - fantastic result!

A first Fund Raising Event for a small Charity is always a nail-biting affair wondering if it will be a success or not. Well, Educating Others' first event surpassed our wildest expectations. So far over £485-00 has been raised to be divided between GUA Africa and Rose of Sharon. The weekend didn't end there, after Church on Sunday 29 August, Phithi (our co-founder) was presented with a cheque for £250-00 from the congregation and PCC of St. John's Church, Horninglow and again this will be shared between our beneficiaries. We at Educating Others are so grateful for the generosity shown by the people in our area of Staffordshire, and though many have been thanked personally, we hope if we have missed anyone that they will accept our thanks through this Blog and our Newsletter. A few photos from Saturday's event are below.

A few of the visitors

some of the Sale items

Phithi chatting with three people with Zimbabwe connections;
Cyril on the left was in east Africa for 50 years, leaving
Zimbabwe in 2003. Heather, on the right, was born in the then
Rhodesia, Jane in the middle was also born there.
Cyril and Heather have both written articles for our earlier
Newsletters and both live locally.

Co-founder, Brenda Yates standing, chatting to helpers

Some more visitors

Phithi with Jane and Heather

Phithi with co-founders David and Brenda Yates standing
behind and three of the helpers at the event.