Spend It Well

02 November 2013

Soccer and Books at Sesal School

If a picture is worth a 1000 words, an actual visit to a school site must be worth about 1 million. I’ve seen scores of photos of Sesal school, but actually being there this week brought home even more how great the need is. The 6 classrooms at the school are literally falling down and only 2 of them have a roof and can be used in anyway for the 340 children. We’re still finalising our project for Sesal – but on this visit we were able to deliver boxes of stationery supplies donated by the Rotary Club of Unley and Glen, a Spend it Well supporter from Melbourne, brought soccer balls and played with the kids which they loved .

project: Sesal

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02 November 2013

Ossoluga School is Looking Great

To get to Ossoluga school last Wednesday we drove 4.5 hours from Dili, along the narrow coastal road, crossing a river and then winding up a steep dirt mountain road. The views are spectacular and the new school is perched on the side of the mountain looking over the valley. The foundations and framing are in and the walls are going up. It’s a fabulous looking building and already I can see the improvements our pro-bono architect has made to the design. Tome the builder is employing 4 locals on the construction which is giving them new skills and an income. The contrast to the old windowless, dirt floored school only 50 m away is huge. The new school should be all finished within a month.

project: Ossoluga

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25 October 2013

Kris Timor Bound Next Week

This time next week I will be in Timor with Graham, Simon and Stephen, the other Spend it Well founders. We’ll take a big road trip to visit Ossoluga School which is only a month from completion and also Sesal school (which we plan to start in a month or so). We’ll get to do one of my favourite things – giving packs of fabulous books, pencils etc to the school children, all sourced and shipped to us by Rotary Club of Unley.

These are photos of Ossoluga just before construction started – I’ll have more photos of progress next week.

project: Ossoluga, Sesal

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23 October 2013

Melbourne Lunch raises $32,000 for Sesal School

Two months ago Toby Hemming, who I’d never met, but who’d been to one of our schools in Timor, came to me with the idea of raising money for us in Melbourne. We decided on a boardroom lunch and by last Tuesday, Toby had secured John Thwaites (ex Vic Deputy Premier) to speak and convinced almost 30 people to come along and pay $1,000 a head. Many other people who couldn’t attend the lunch donated as well. With the generosity of Peter McMullin and Cornwall Stodart who let us use their boardroom and the fabulous catering duo of Eliza McNair and Kate Ansett who provided a beautiful meal for us at cost price we raised $32,245. This brings our total funding for Sesal school to over $100,000 and will allow us to build them 6 new classrooms and toilets. It is an amazing result.