Cards are available from Kaloko's Brighton office for £3.75 for a pack of 10 (plus postage).

UK postage costs: £2.00 for 1-2 packs; £2.60 for 3-5 packs; £4.90 for 6-10 packs.

Please send  a cheque made payable to the Kaloko Trust, stating your address and the quantity required.

Kaloko's 2011 Christmas card sold out

Kaloko’s Christmas card this year was again kindly designed for us by supporter and art teacher Rob Rutterford. Our thanks go to him.

The message inside the card reads 'With best wishes for Christmas and the New Year'.

I'm sorry to disappoint but the cards are now sold out.

If you can help Dr Gillam reach his target of raising £8,729 to refurbish the clinic he, and and the people of Luansobe, will be very grateful. Dr Gillam has already raised an impressive £2,860, mainly from his generous circle of friends, colleagues and relatives.

Dr Gillam recently ran and cycled the 106 miles of the Peddar's Way and Norfolk Coast Path to help encourage further donations. He successfully completed this challenge, along with his friend Dr Jenny Amery, over the weekend of 9 to 11 September 2011.

But there is still a long way to go to reach his ambitious fundraising target. Donations can be made in the usual way through the website or by cheque to the Kaloko office in Brighton.

Clinic Rehabilitation

The Rural Health Clinic (RHC) in Luansobe is to undergo full refurbishment to allow staff to provide the best service to the community. Several clinic buildings which date back to the early 1990s are, due to the effects of weather, in a state of considerable disrepair. Funding constraints 20 years ago demanded the use of basic building materials such as local mud bricks, rough timber roof joists and hand-made cement tiles, many of which have deteriorated with time. Some wards at the clinic are no longer fit for use, and one room has been closed off altogether because of the state of the roof and walls. Services have moved to an adjoining building, but lack of running water and sterilising facilities limits its use. Work will commence when funding allows, using cement bricks, metal window and door frames, steel trusses and tin roofs to minimise future maintenance costs.

The drive to repair the RHC is in line with recent recommendations by visiting public health expert Dr Steve Gillam who stressed that the clinic must be a fully-functional hub for the provision of healthcare. Not one to give purely theoretical advice, however, Dr Gillam has undertaken to raise the £8,729 needed to rehabilitate the buildings, and ran a half-marathon to kickstart his fundraising campaign. Other fundraising events are planned including a walk and cycle along the Norfolk coast.

Once clinic repairs are complete, health staff will be able to offer improved services to the community. These include the child vaccinations, an under-5s clinic, antenatal and family-planning consultations, assisted birthing, malaria testing and treatment, retreating mosquito nets with insecticide, one-to-one HIV/AIDS counselling, providing anti-retroviral drugs and HIV/AIDS information, and disseminating general health and sanitation information.

Teacher Exchange between Brighton and Luansobe

Two enthusiastic and dedicated teachers from Varndean College in Brighton, Hazel O’Donnell and Cathy Davies, spent their half term holiday from the College visiting Zambia where they taught staff and pupils at LUBS and other local schools. The visit was the first phase of an exchange programme which will see two teachers from LUBS visit the UK next year, paid for by fundraising activities being undertaken at Varndean College and by the two teachers.

Cathy and Hazel ran a sports leadership course over two weeks in May/June involving many pupils from LUBS and the surrounding community schools in new games and sporting activities. They funded the visit themselves and even used their extra luggage allowance to take out bags full of sporting equipment to donate to the school and the community.

Peer Education Project Begins

Many young people in the Copperbelt have limited knowledge of HIV/AIDS transmission, and engage in sexual intercourse at a young age or have high risk sex. Although basic information is available locally on HIV/AIDS it is not designed for the young and many do not recognise the potential consequences or how they could adapt their behaviour and improve their life chances. Kaloko is now reaching out to the new generation by implementing a tailored Peer Education Project, funded by the Three Oaks Trust, to inform and influence their attitudes to this real and present risk.

Peer education is based on the reality that many people make changes not only based on what they know, but on the opinions and actions of their close, trusted peers. Peer educators can communicate and understand in a way that the best-intentioned adults can't, and can serve as role models for change. Peer educators work alongside the teacher or run educational activities on their own. They can help raise awareness, provide accurate information, and help their classmates develop skills to change behaviour through: leading informal discussions; video and drama presentations; one-on-one time talking with fellow students; handing out condoms, leaflets and brochures; offering counselling, support and referral to services. Using a highly interactive approach, the project will focus on life skills training specifically for teen pregnancy reduction, HIV/AIDS prevention, substance abuse, and rape. This programme will be delivered to children over 14 years of age this year at the four schools in the Luansobe area.

£10 from you would enable us to supply a family with a bed net and vital health education. Donate now here.

Number One Killer

In its ongoing fight against the killer disease malaria, Kaloko Trust plans to extend its Malaria Education Programme to reach many more vulnerable families in Luansobe.

Kaloko’s work in distributing mosquito bed-nets and in educating residents on cause and prevention has seen tangible success. Nevertheless, despite a drop in malaria fatalities, the disease remains the number one cause of death in rural Zambia. A recent survey by Kaloko shows that a quarter of heads of families in the Luansobe area are still unaware of the cause of the disease, and over one family in five has no bed-nets for protection. Of those households which do have nets, 66% do not have enough for the whole family.

Without more bed nets, malaria will continue to claim lives. Over the coming year Kaloko aims to reach approximately 400 families.

Please visit
www.pelican-post.org
to find out more.

Books to Schools

We are excited to announce that we have linked up with a new partner charity, through which supporters can send books direct to Kaloko’s schools in Zambia. The web-based Pelican Post scheme enables donors to send books direct to two Luansobe community schools – Kwesha and Kandulwe. By visiting www.pelican-post.org you can see details of the schools and a carefully selected list of books suitable for different age groups that you can buy and send out for the children to enjoy. The scheme provides another way in which people in the UK and worldwide can do something practical to improve the educational facilities available in the area. We hope the scheme will draw in some new support for these two deserving schools.

Kwesha isn’t yet supported through Kaloko’s class sponsorship scheme and is in particular need of books. It has just eight books at the moment and all are written in Bemba, the local language. Despite this lack of resources, 29 pupils sat for public exams at Grade 7 and 21 pupils were selected to Grade 8 reading standard. As you can imagine, a small library of English books will have a big impact on improving reading skills further.

Sorry, 2010 Christmas cards now sold out.

Kaloko Christmas cards

Not strictly news from Luansobe... but news to help our work in Luansobe. Please support us this Christmas buy buying and sending our Kaloko Christmas card. It spreads the word about what we do and helps us find the new support we need.

Kaloko’s delightful Christmas card this year was designed exclusively for us by supporter and art teacher Rob Rutterford.

Would you like to join the Grandmother Sponsorship Scheme?
£10 a month makes all the difference to these grandmothers,helping them to feed, clothe and educate the children left in their care. Learn more here or go to our donation form which you can print off and send to us by post here.

Granny scheme grows

Kaloko’s Granny Scheme is expanding to ensure that more grandmothers receive assistance to care for orphaned grandchildren. Help will now extend to include a total of eight local households with grandmothers at their head.
Four grandmothers, sole carers of their 11 orphaned grandchildren, are currently receiving assistance from Kaloko in the form of school uniforms and shoes, books and pencils. They will shortly also be given seed and fertiliser to help them grow crops in the coming rainy season. The scheme has attracted generous sponsorship in the UK and, with increased funding, can now extend to four more families in the same position of hardship.

Orphaned children with uniforms & shoes provided through Kaloko’s Grandmother Sponsorship

The 2010 shipment of bicycles has arrived

Luansobe residents are jubilant at the arrival in Luansobe of the second container of reconditioned bicycles from the UK. The 349 bikes were sourced by the UK charity Re~Cycle, and transport costs were funded by the proceeds from the sale of bikes sent last year.
The 2010 shipment has been eagerly anticipated. With poor roads and inadequate bus services, bicycles give Zambia’s rural communities crucial access to affordable transport. Wherever you go in the area, you will see bicycles. Bikes take the sick to clinics and children to schools; bikes ferry goods to and from market; they move unwieldy equipment, jerry cans of clean water; bags of maize; bundles of firewood and sacks of dried beans; bikes carry people to church and relatives to visit families. They are essential to ordinary rural life.
As in 2009, this year’s consignment is being sold locally at a very modest price. Luansobe residents say that, despite being second-hand, the bikes are more robust and better suited to local conditions than new bikes being sold in nearby towns.  Their popularity – and affordability – is clear; of the 411 bicycles of varying sizes sent out in 2009, only three children’s scooters remain in stock. The vast majority of bicycles which went on sale in late August 2010 had sold by early September.

Full to the brim

Good rains and a well-chosen site mean that Kantolo dam, completed just before the start of the rains in November 2009, is already full to capacity.
Local villagers, who would normally expect the dam to take two years to fill, now look forward to reaping the benefits of their contribution to the project. In partnership with Kaloko Zambia, they have worked hard during each dry season over the past three years, digging the core trench, filling it with clay to stop leakage under the earth wall, and breaking and carrying tonnes of rock to line the spillway. Kantolo dam, the fifth built by Kaloko in the area, will not only raise water tables in local wells, it will also provide water for livestock in the coming dry season and allow villagers to grow vegetables on small hand-irrigated plots around the dam.

Kwesha Transformed

Kwesha School has undergone a dramatic change, thanks to the determined efforts of the local community working over the last two years in close partnership with the Department of Education and the charities, Kaloko Trust and Caritas.
In 2007, Kwesha had no qualified teachers for its 320 pupils and occupied a dilapidated former dairy and piggery. At the start of this academic year in January, however, the school boasted two qualified teachers, funded by the local Department of Education, and was justifiably proud of four bright, new classrooms equipped with blackboards, desks and chairs. There are also two new teachers’ offices and storerooms and, in the coming months, Kaloko will be working with the community helping them to build houses for the teaching staff. It has been a remarkable achievement!

Infrastructure Expansion

Kaloko Trust is driving forward its programme to extend basic health services, education and clean water by creating a network of ‘satellite service centres’ in the remote villages around Luansobe. The first phase includes five community schools and health outposts together with ten boreholes and hand-pumps.
In recent years the growing population has placed increasing pressure on the limited resources of the Luansobe Upper Basic School and the Rural Health Clinic. By the end of this year, working hand-in-hand with the Departments of Health and Education, other charities and local communities, Kaloko hopes to have completed three community schools, four health outposts and five boreholes and pumps. The Department of Education has already provided six qualified teachers at three schools, as well as school furniture.
Kandulwe, Serenje and Kwesha are the first villages to have benefited from the programme, with these communities playing a strong part in providing free land, labour and building materials. Almost 1000 children will be saved a walk of several kilometres each day to attend a more distant school, while 600 rural families will receive regular medical attention and have access to safe water near their homes. Once the first phase is complete Kaloko Trust would like to extend the programme further to more outlying villages.

More bikes on their way May 2010

Plans are progressing to ship a further container of 350 bicycles donated by the charity Re~cycle to Zambia. The bicycles were loaded for shipment in mid May 2010. The shipment is being financed through the proceeds from the sale of cycles sent out in 2009.
Kaloko is also discussing with other UK charities the possibility of sending carpentry tool sets, in another consignment, to support a skills development programme envisaged for the Luansobe Carpenters’ Cooperative. This project aims to help ten pupils a year from Luansobe Upper Basic School who would undergo four weeks of training in basic carpentry, better equipping them to find jobs after leaving school.

Low-cost Latrines

Kaloko Trust Zambia has been host to several Finnish university students studying the construction, acceptance and use of dry toilets. Under Sari Huuhtanen of the Global Dry Toilet Association of Finland, six Environmental Health students, as well as Sari and her family, have been working on the project with the Luansobe coordinator, Michello.

60% of the people in the region, says Sari, do not have latrines, and schools often have no or very poor sanitation. The ecological double-vault latrine is well-suited to conditions in rural Zambia, and several dry toilets have now been built near schools and clinics in the area. With the original design costing over £300, however, the challenge is to bring costs to under £100. “The key,” Sari stresses, “Is to make the toilet affordable.”

The primary aim of the project, funded mainly by the Finnish government, is to improve sanitation and hygiene awareness. Waste products, which are pathogen-free if treated correctly, can be also used as a natural fertiliser, however, and trials are underway at Kaloko.

Bright Future

Two hard-working students, Mulenga Kalulu and Golden Musonda, both of whom were sponsored by Kaloko Trust Zambia (KTZ) until they completed their education at Mpongwe High School, are now looking to a bright and fulfilling future.

This year, Mulenga embarked on a university degree in Education, while Golden was accepted to study Medicine at the University of Zambia having achieved nine points in Grade 12 last year, the highest results in the country.