We continue to give rice, as well as milk formula, to poorer areas on Panglao island, as well as to a home for abandoned children in Albur, Bohol. Some of our volunteers helped us in delivering the rice to the people of Looc.
End of January we started a new project! It is a gardening project in 2 of the 3 prisons in Bohol. Ubay: In the last 2 or 3 weeks we have built an 8'000 liter water tank in the Ubay prison in the very north of the island. The prison has an area of around 80,000 m2 of farmland, but no water. This has now changed with this large water reservoir, which collects spring water from 3 sources. The amazing thing is that they didn't even know they had good, clean spring water until we asked them to dig a little deeper where they had previously found water that had stunk really bad and foul. Lo and behold, they even found 3 springs! This, of course, gave the impetus to embark on this promising project, which will provide the almost 100 inmates with a wider choice of healthy food. Their daily food budget is very low, only 70 pesos (about 1.10 francs) per person. Now they can grow vegetables and possibly even rice. Tagbilaran Provincial Prison: In the women's wing of the provincial prison near the provincial capital Tagbilaran, we helped to build a greenhouse to protect the vegetables from excessive heat and planted 5 tower gardens (raised beds) together with the prisoners. Thanks to some faithful supporters from Switzerland were we able to send some extra financial help to Samar to get presents for the children, as well as some Christmas meals and rice as gifts to the parents.
We thank our STEPS leader Amie who is the one always faithfully working on the printing and organizing of the educational materials, as well as the buying of the gifts this year for the Christmas parties. Bright and early on Christmas eve we started to cook a Spaghetti & sausage meal for appr. 300 children. A few small goodies were added to the Christmas Lunch for the children of some very poor local communities in Panglao municipality. To round up the meal, we did some games and songs with the children. This year on Dec. 14, The Bellevue Resort graciously agreed again to let us host our yearly Christmas party with our STEPS preschoolers and their parents in one of their Pavilion event halls. The children did some awesome performances, such as songs, poems and dances for the participants, followed by their parents' lively numbers. We had a few short and memorable talks about what to give Jesus for Christmas since it's His birthday after all, as well as some prayers and words about the real meaning of Christmas by Manny, Stefan and Eveline. The real fun started when Santa arrived on the scene! The 30 kids from our 3 different preschool groups in Doljo and Lourdes sang a cute song for him, after which Santa gave each child presents and goodies, and the parents received food packages. The celebration ended with a yummy meal, prepared by The Bellevue Resort and the parents, and some fun fellowship! |