In between 4th birthday parties, trips to the local theme park, a firework party, being generously donated several pumpkins by a nearby farmer and working out what to do with them, I have managed to get the design done for The YoMo Foundation Christmas donation voucher.

Actually its more of a card. The idea is that if you are struggling to buy a present for somebody but feel obliged to ‘just get them something’, instead of wasting your money on something they won’t really appreciate, you can make a donation on their behalf to support childrens school fees in Malawi and demonstrate your gift by printing off the card.

I know charity Xmas cards aren’t original but thats not really where my original thinking lay. When I came back from our first trip to Malawi I was chatting about the experience with my old boss and the realisation of how wasteful we actually are and that I’d been struck too when I got back at all the adverts on TV for supporting pets, sponsoring animals, buying your dog toys & so on. His reply was that it does say something when supermarkets dedicate a whole aisle just for feeding pets. Now I’m conscious of not losing a whole load of pet lovers here so I’ll tread carefully, but I did (and still do) wonder what our annual expenditure is on animals and how this compares to the money donated to support people in developing nations?

I’m only going to lose an argument on the relative merits of money spent on animals/pets (in the UK at least) but I hope I can convince nearly everyone that we do waste money on many things that either aren’t needed, or in the case of some Christmas gifts, aren’t really appreciated.

So heres a chance to have a think before you do go and buy those novelty socks or fancily packaged beer kit…. if you don’t think it will really be appreciated make a small donation instead that really will be appreciated. I can’t emphasise enough that I mean REALLY appreciated - this very honestly is about supporting some of the very worst off children in one of the poorest countries in the world to have an opportunity that they will not have unless we can raise funding to support their fees.

I’m working on a website for The YoMo Foundation at the moment that will have more about this but its going to take a little while to put together. In the meantime if you want more information just get in touch with me and I’ll very happily chat more.

For now if you’d like to make a donation you can do so by…..

Donating online here:

or writing a cheque payable to “The YoMo Foundation”

and posting to:

The YoMo Foundation
Suite 218
29-30 Horse Fair
Banbury
Oxon
OX16 0BW

Once done please head over to SCRIBD and print off the card/voucher on to some suitably nice card or stiff paper. I am willing to print off copies on behalf of anyone that wants to make several donations - if so let me know by sending an email to info@yomo.co.uk (they’ll even be ‘professionally’ folded by my ‘professional folding machine’! - no seriously they will!)

Link to download the card is here

Note that the card has been designed to print on A4 paper. Printing is doublesided (as in print page 1, take it out, swap it over & print page 2), and there are two cards per sheet of A4 (folding down to A6 size).

If you want an authentic Malawian card you can also order some of these!

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Tags: Africa & Overseas, campaign, poverty, schools, Society & Issues, ya

Kondwani has sent in his latest report of the work he’s doing in Zomba running the ‘YoMo in Malawi Office’. Included are some of the latest school reports (which I’ll post in the next few weeks) and some photos including the YoMo All Stars football team and their visit to the Football Stadium. Also in there are some photos from Ernests wedding (who runs the other project we support), and Kondwanis recently arrived twins - so congratulations all round.

Kondwani is doing a fantastic job. The work he’s doing has been completely of his own volition and he’s clearly doing an incredible amount - all voluntary and while juggling his job, his young family and his own studies. His studies interestingly are to complete the same secondary qualification that he is trying to support local children to be able to obtain. It’s an indication of his selflessness that he sought to give that opportunity to others first before looking to do it himself.

Also in his latest update are some handmade Christmas Cards made by his friend. Postage is (relatively) expensive so they’ve been arriving in drips & drabs, but you can see below the first set.

I’m working on a Voucher at the moment to allow people to make a donation to childrens school fees as a Christmas Gift. Hopefully I’ll get these finished over the weekend. In the meantime though I thought I’d offer (more…)

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Tags: Africa & Overseas, poverty, ya

I’m sceptical about what the benefit of Blog Action Day is, however being as the theme of ‘poverty’ is relevant to what we do it does at least provide a timely excuse for providing an update on the work of The YoMo Foundation.

Over in Malawi things have been making good progress. Kondwani is planning to set up football and netball tournaments for local children with the aim of identifying which ones need support to attend secondary school (and which he feels are capable of doing well at school). He’s planning on purchasing a bike to help get around more easily and to save on taxi fees and we’ve agreed to fund that. We’ll also be making decisions about how many children we can support for fees this year within the next few weeks.

Back in the UK things have taken a lot longer. The YoMo Foundation was actually set up back in 2005 (its older than the company!). Originally I’d said that I would support it but I wouldn’t be involved in the running of it, therefore the roles of Chair, Secretary, Treasurer etc. were taken on by various others. Unfortunately well meaning as these people were, they weren’t well organised, and it seems also weren’t talking to each other!

In the meantime we’ve had a restructuring and taken on some new Trustees including Kirsty Taylor and John Olaleye and I’ve also now taken on that responsibility.

Kirsty is probably the most committed of any of us to the work in Africa. She’s been involved in all of our trips out there including both Tanzania and Malawi, and more recently she’s also been involved with an initiative in Zambia. John became involved with us back in 2001 when he supported a group of young people from Hackney to attend courses with us. After that he returned to volunteer with us many times. More recently John has been working with Arsenal Football Club including a stint working in Indonesia and the skills and experience he has are sure to be very beneficial to us.

In the next few weeks I’m planning to get all of the latest information about the Foundation online. Along the way I’m also intending to edit up some of the footage from our last trip there at the start of this year. In the meantime.

Finally if you don’t know what the Foundation does…… we aim to raise funding to support school fees for children in Malawi. You can read more about that here and here

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Tags: Africa & Overseas, poverty, ya

I wrote a few weeks ago about the Grace Orphan Project in Zomba, Malawi and that we had offered to sponsor some of the children so that they can go to School. Well I’m very pleased that today we’ve agreed to support 10 children to go to school including covering the costs of their school uniforms, text books and extra tuition.

I’ll post updates on how this progresses later in the year.

The cost for each childs school fee is an average of £21 a year! Not a lot to us but if you consider that the average wage in Malawi is about 80 pence a day (£24 month) then relatively thats a very large amount and for children without parents there may be nobody to provide any kind of financial assistance.

We’d like to support more children in the future so we’re on the look out for any kinds of donations towards this. All money donated will be used directly for the work of the Grace Project - if you’d like to make a donation send us an email to enquiries@yomofoundation.co.uk

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Tags: Africa & Overseas, child rights, poverty, ya

Some more interviews with children involved with the Grace Orphan Project in Zomba, Malawi. Mussa (12) and Simple (13) are two of the nicest young people I’ve ever met - if they were in this country we’d have jumped at the chance to get them volunteering with us. As it is its probably more worthwhile that they’re talents are put to use to help the Grace project develop - lets hope they get the opportunities they will need to develop their education and stay involved….

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Tags: Africa & Overseas, child rights, film, poverty, ya

Fenny is one of the children involved with the Grace Orphan Project and is the first of the children who kindly agreed to do an interview with us last month.

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Tags: Africa & Overseas, film, poverty, ya

Having been up all night mostly cursing our DVD copying facilities I decided to take the day off today which gave me chance to finish off the report we promised to provide the Grace Orphan & Disabled Care Group in Malawi following our recent visit out to them.

While out there we did a series of film interviews with some of the children which we’ll try & get online soon. These along with some of the group development training and general activity days helped us to get a much deeper understanding of both the children and the group than we gained last year.

The group itself is now meeting on its own land which has been fenced off. This is a huge step forward from last year when the group were meeting under a tree next to somebodys house! They still have a long way to go though and much like the name of their Manager they need to travel step by step’ (Ernest Pondeponde is the Manager - ponde ponde means step by step!), (the neighbouring town is called Pondebwino - step carefully!).

Just like any community group in the UK the group has a committee, and much like (more…)

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Tags: Africa & Overseas, poverty, ya

On Saturday some of us return to Malawi - this time we’ll be spending three weeks in Zomba - returning on New Years Eve.

So its time to take my first Malaria Tablet and it’s time to get our kit packed. Heres a list of the various stuff we’ll be taking with us…..

First Aid Kits: We have two of these. One with clean syringes and several sets of latex gloves + an Aspivenin kit (a thing that sucks outbites & stings - its only been used once and that was for some unknown thing that took a liking to my foot!). This is the ’serious’ kit that hopefully doesn’t get used.

The second kit is more ‘normal’ albeit with some additions. The normal stuff includes (more…)

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Tags: Africa & Overseas, events, poverty, ya