Baby Latif’s family live in a village close to our new Nutrition Centre building.  They heard about us through the official opening and visited the next day.  Latif’s mother had a severe breast infection and was unable to feed him properly.   He looked like skin and bones and weighed just 2.3kg at 3 months’ age. They had come just in time.

Latif’s family were unwilling to take his mother to the hospital as they had consulted a soothsayer who said that if they did so the doctor would cut her breasts off.  They were also traditional healers, though the herbs and other things they used to heal mother and child had no effect.

Eventually we persuaded them to allow Latif’s mother to go to the hospital.  She was very fearful and it was a battle to keep her there.  But when the family saw the benefit the hospital treatment was having they forced her to stay.

Meanwhile, we taught the family to bottle feed Latif and he began to gain weight.  Just three weeks later Latif was unrecognisable, weighing 4.1kg, and the mother was able to breast feed again. This is just one story of the many lives transformed by Neesim Nutrition Centre.

Latif before

With our P1 class in a grass hut and our P2 and P3 classes squashed in rooms meant for teacher’s accommodation we are in real need of a new school block at Neesim Primary School. We have been hoping and praying that the District Assembly (local council) would be able to build one for us, however their funding has still not materialised so it’s time to take matters in to our own hands…

We plan to build a new classroom block in three stages.

Stage 1 will be to erect pillars and a roof, with a low surrounding wall. This will cost €5000. Once this is complete we will be able to use the classrooms until funds are available for stages 2 and 3.

Stage 2 will consist of building and plastering the walls and floors (€10,000). Then Stage 3 will involve putting in the doors, windows and electricals, and painting (€10,000).

We are delighted that thanks to some generous supporters we now have most of what is needed for stage 1 so work can begin soon.

Could you help us with stage 2?

If you would like to make a donation from the UK you can send a gift through Partner Aid who will channel the funds to us. Check out partneraid.org for information on how to give. Please remember to drop them an email or post a note stating that your gift is for ‘Project Share – Neesim Primary School building’. Thank you!

If you would like to make a donation from the Netherlands gifts can be transferred to Stichting Project Share Nederland in Leiden, Rabobank 15.25.56.281. Please mark your gift with the intended purpose (e.g. new school block). If you pay taxes in the Netherlands, your gift is then tax deductable. Thank you!

The temporary grass hut where our P1 class currently has their lessons.

On Saturday we were delighted to be able to open the new building for our nutrition centre.   Lots of people came to celebrate with us, including some chiefs and sub-chiefs from Gushegu and nearby villages.  We enjoyed traditional music, dancing and speeches before the chief of Yishelanyili (the village next to the nutrition centre) cut the ribbon and we all looked around the building.  It was a great way to raise awareness about malnutrition and highlight the work of the centre, and we even distributed moringa seeds for everyone to take home and plant.  Indeed, the day after the opening we had a visit from the parents of a very malnourished baby.  The parents had heard about the centre because of the opening and came to seek help.  We hope that the child will recover well.

In the past 6 years we have provided around 65 families with loans in order to increase their income. This system works quite well and has great potential. Unfortunately we realised that it costs a lot of time for it to work really well, and there is no-one on our team at the moment who can take up this task. Because the goal was for loans to run for 5 years, we decided to collect the loans for now and we will not be giving out any loans this year. As soon as we find someone who could take up this task, we will obviously start distributing micro-credit again. We are very grateful for over 40 families who now have a far better income and are mostly able to continue independently. Many thanks to everyone who contributed to this!

During the third term of the 2010-11 school year, we appointed a supervisor from the Ghana Education Service to supervise our teachers, and to provide training and advice.  Not only did our teachers benefit greatly from the supervisor’s expertise, but the supervisor and his colleagues at the GES office were greatly impressed by our school, declaring it one of the best in the entire district!

This was a great encouragement to us and our teaching staff as we continue to provide the best education we can to our pupils.  But it is also a reminder of the poor standard of education in the district, as we know there is still room for improvement in our school.  We continue to work closely with GES to provide in-house training for our teachers. Five of our seven teachers are now undertaking distance learning to become trained teachers and we look forward to the benefits this will bring.

Once again we had a large number of parents interested in enrolling their children for the new KG1 class in September, and were forced to turn some away.  With five classes, we are now desperately in need of a new school block.  Our P2 and P3 classes are both using small rooms in the teacher’s quarters, and P1 is still in a temporary grass structure which won’t survive the rainy season later this year.  We are hoping the District Assembly will provide a classroom block for us in the next few months.

The three wise men bring their gifts to the baby Jesus.

One of the recent highlights at the school was the Christmas play.  All 150 children took part in singing and acting out the Christmas story and lots of parents came to watch.  The kids all did a great job and we were very proud of them.

Thank you to everyone who generously contributed to our recent appeals for the nutrition centre.  We now have enough money to keep the centre running for several months, plus all the funding has come in for the new building and it is well on its way to completion.  The nutrition centre continues to be well-attended, highlighting the real need for the rehabilitation of malnourished children in the district, and we are looking forward to moving into the new building within the next month.

The centre was previously housed in a rented building.  However, this building was in desperate need of renovation and the landlord wanted to increase the rent and was asking for 2 years payment in advance.  We asked for a few months extension of our contract whilst we could look for funds to put up our own purpose built centre, but the landlord found someone else to rent the building and in November 2011 we were forced to move into a temporary building which is not suitable for our needs.  We began building with the funds we had, sent out an appeal and prayed.  Then on Christmas Eve we were delighted to find out that we had enough money to complete.

The building is in the local style of a compound house (with the rooms around the edge) so that it can be a home away from home for the mothers and children.  We want the mothers to feel comfortable there, and we also believe that they are more likely to put what they have learned into practice when they return home if they have seen the principles we teach lived out in a familiar setting.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Nederlands.

Neesim nutrition centre runs entirely on gifts from individuals and churches. Unfortunately, these gifts don’t come in very regularly and funds are running low.  At the moment, the nutrition centre is in desperate need of funding in order to continue its life-saving work.  Every month we help an average of seven children to overcome malnutrition and return home healthy.

It only costs €35 to rehabilitate one child. Will you help Neesim Nutrition Centre in the battle against malnutrition? (How can I help?)

After a year and a half of ‘just us’, we now have a team again! In October Tunteeya joined us (long-term), she helps with a number of administrative jobs, helps with English and crafts at the school and generally works with women and children. Puumaaya and Napari also came in October for 7 months to do their nursing internship. And just recently in early February, another Puumaaya and Ncheti joined us for three months of nursing internship. They all work part-time at the hospital and part-time at the nutrition centre, so we should be able to get a lot done there! See current team

Lack of knowledge is the main cause of malnutrition in the Gushegu district. Most mothers simply don’t know that a child of 6 months old needs more than breast milk alone. Usually women breastfeed exclusively for about a year or even more. In this way, a child slowly starves, entering the vicious cycle of malnutrition. (scan ‘where there is no doctor’ picture)

If knowledge is key, then education provides the solution. Napari and Puumaaya have developed a simple way of involving illiterate women in the battle against malnutrition. In 10 simple pictures a women can tell about healthy, balanced nutrition, the importance of supplementary feeding from 6 months on, basic hygiene and some easy ways to supplement the local diet (see moringa).  The first woman has been successfully trained and is already making an impact in Gushegu. We are hoping to train 20 more women in the coming months, so that we can see a wave of awareness spreading throughout the district. We believe that malnutrition can be eradicated here!