Compassion Orphanage Round 2

We went back to Compassion Orphanage today to talk more in depth to the people that work there. Sorry for the long post. I know I already covered Compassion in a previous post, but I found out a lot more information. It’s a really cool place!

Quick Facts
Founded in Tanzania: 1999
Sakina Center Founded: 2001
No. of Centers in Arusha: 7
No. of Students (2009): 279
No. of Staff: 4
No. of Committee Members: 7 (3 yr. term, replace 2 members every year)
No. of Bible Study Teachers: 9-12

Key Contacts
Program Coordinator: Moses Mollel
Social Worker: Joyce Mmbaga
Health Worker: Judicate Mathias
Accountant: Veronica
Pastor: Noel Urio

Operations
Every staff member has a daily, weekly, and monthly plan. Twice a month, the staff meets with 7 committee members, who are church members at Compassion.
Compassion keeps a folder for every child for their health and education records. They also give a folder to every child to keep at home for letters from their sponsors.

Every staff member at Compassion must visit all of the children’s houses and schools every year, with the social worker visiting those houses with more serious issues. They check the home environment and to make sure the child still has their folder.
In a typical week, the accountant goes to secondary schools to pay school fees. The health worker takes children to the hospital. The social worker does house visits while the coordinator registers new children. They all spend time helping the children write letters to their sponsors.
Every Friday, they have a meeting to give progress reports and evaluate their action plan.

Registration
When a child comes in to register, they visit their homes to look at the home situation. They typically register those who are orphans or have a poor home situation. They take pictures of newly registered children and send them off to the main office, who then records the new applicant and sends it off to the world office in Colorado Springs. The headquarters then matches up sponsors with children. Children can wait up to 5 months to find a sponsor, but typically wait about 3 months before they get matched up. I think they said that if a child gets sick before they find a sponsor, Compassion still takes care of their health issues.

Letter Writing
Every Wednesday, the staff picks up sponsor letters from the main office in Arusha and distributes them to the children. The children then must write a letter back.
Compassion has a special letter writing form where the letters are written in English or Swahili and then translated into the other language so that each party can understand the other.

How often the children write depends on how often their sponsor writes, but there are three times when every child is required to write a letter: Christmas, Easter, and school holiday.

Resources
In terms of education, the resources available to the students depend on the specific sponsor and what the sponsor plans to fund. However, most sponsors fund at least transportation, textbooks, and school fees.
Compassion sponsors a safari every year to the national parks and pays for all of the students to go.
Compassion also has some health related books, which are kept on site.

Education
Education is a very integral part of Compassion, whether through international sponsorships, health education, bible study, or supplemental classes.
The staff goes to all of the schools and collect attendance records every month and grades after every term from the headteachers. If a student has poor performance, they also pay for tutorial lessons. Currently, Compassion’s oldest students are in form IV.

The staff keeps a completion plan for each child, which is updated annually. Compassion will only sponsor students until age 22. The completion plan keeps information such as their records, ambitions and what they hope to achieve with their education.

On Saturdays, they have 9-12 teachers teach bible study in addition to health seminars, welding, carpentry, tailoring, and cooking.

Enrichment
Sponsors sometimes come to visit the children, which is a great opportunity to learn about new cultures.

At Compassion, the staff holds spiritual camps. They also coordinate sports teams (netball, football, volleyball) which compete with the other 6 centers in Arusha. Choirs from all of the centers coordinate joint concerts. Finally, the headteachers at the schools help with organizing education competitions, such as exams, spelling bees, debates, writing competitions, and even history bees.

Health
Every Saturday they have health education for ages 3-16. They also have adolescent stage lessons which teach children 10 and above how to avoid risky behaviors.
If a student gets sick, Compassion pays for all of the children’s health needs and accompanies them to the hospital. They have a special treatment book with the child’s picture in it that they bring to the doctor at the hospital to make notes about the student.

Compassion prepares monthly disease and prevalence reports for the main compassion branch in Arusha. In addition to recording a child’s illness in his or her records, they also use monthly treatment records for internal use to record when a child gets sick. They record details such as the child’s complaint, what the hospital treated them for, and how much it cost.

In March and September they do health screenings of all of the children with a parent present. They check whether the child has access to: water, a clean latrine, a medical facility, and a pharmacy. They also check eyes, ears, head, nose, teeth, skin, hygiene, signs of infection, conduct problems, activity level problems, signs of parasites, clinical signs of malnutrition, and nutrition intake over three screenings. The health worker may also decide to refer a child for treatment.

Future Plans
Future Plans: They hope to have a computer program as well as a form V and VI and university program. Their oldest children are in form IV, so they hope to continue supporting them all the way through university. Other compassion branches have students all the way through university.

I gave out the little bag of toys that I brought today to the neighborhood kids, which included some playdough, a frisbee, necklace making kit, stress reliever balls, mardi gras beads, key chains, etc. They LOVED them.

We also got invited to a send off party tomorrow night (see my post about weddings, basically a rehearsal dinner without the rehearsal) – I get to wear my kitenge that I picked up today!!!!

KEY AGES: The TZ government considers you an adult at 18, which means that that is the age you are legally allowed to smoke, drink, vote, drive, be subject to adult punishment in court, and enlist in the military.

Vocab word of the day:
Kusoma – to read