Spend It Well

30 June 2010

Kid helping other kids

You’ve got to believe that there is good in the world when children help other children. Oliver and Emily’s parents came to the White Party and after hearing about Lequeracabu’u School, the kids decided that they wanted to help. So they had a bake sale which they conducted with great enthusiasm and effort (this at age 7 and 5), donating all of the money which they raised. Fantastic work!

project: Lequeracabu'u East Timor

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26 June 2010

Wet season is finished – Lequeracabu’u set to go

With the wet season finally behind us, Jenny met with Mario the builder on Monday to finalise everything. The building work should take 3 months – we’ll have an exact start date in the next few days. The photo is from a previous meeting and is of Spend it Well’s Agostinho, Simon and Jenny as well as Lequeracabu’u’s village chief, Mario the builder and Januario, from the Ministry of Education. Can’t wait to see holes being dug and concrete being poured!

project: Lequeracabu'u East Timor

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15 June 2010

School shirts for Lequeracabu’u

The pile of white school shirts on my dining table is growing! Pearl Primary School in Abu Dhabi is changing their school uniform next year and a fabulous mother has gathered hundreds of the old (but good) ones for me to take to Lequeracabu’u. Another fab mother has taken 60 longsleeved shirts to a tailor and is paying for them to be shortened to be suitable for Timor heat. Latest count is over 200 which means we’ll be able to give 2 to each child. With luck we’ll also have extras to take to Ostico school as well.

project: Lequeracabu'u East Timor

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10 June 2010

Great changes to basic school design

The incredible success of the White Party has meant that we have the money to really improve the design of Lequeracabu’u school. We now have a quote and plans for:

* Including a ceiling which will make a massive difference in summer

* Using a better quality and longer lasting wood

* Using exposed stone up to window level rather than wood

*And last, but definitely not least, installing electricity for lights and to power points.

Kind of hard to believe things like this are optional extras!

We will also have a quote shortly for guttering and a water tank – for which we’re working on separate funding. Seems ridiculous to be looking at water storage during this incredible wet season, but once the rain does stop, there will be almost none for the rest of the year. Within a few months the countryside will be incredibly dry and the tank water hugely beneficial to the school

Today’s photo is just to show how incredibly beautiful Timor is.

project: Lequeracabu'u East Timor

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28 May 2010

Fond relections on the visit to Timor-Leste

After Dili, the bustle of the Melbourne coffee shops and CBD life [on my first visit to Australia this year] is certainly a world away in terms of daily experiences. There is real interest in many places now for what our small charity is doing: people warm readily to our concept of 100% of funds going to directly to the projects, with zero administration costs. Following the visit, we have a lot to do: delivering Lequeracabu’u, identifying our next big project, packaging up smaller high-value projects and following up on teacher training, scholarships, sporting facilities, library materials and the like. We are all very grateful for Kris’ energy and organisational skills! Stephen will be next on the ground in Dili, in July it seems, unless some of our readers or donors are likely to be there earlier. If so, please let us know. In the interim, I have attached a couple more photos from the visit to Ostico and thank everyone involved on the ground in Dili for their generous time and support.