Many thanks to Tania Glithero and a team of Golder Trust for Orphans volunteers in Calgary who built a Valentine’s Gift Basket only 2 days before Valentine’s Day and raffled it in exchange for donations to the Trust. The Calgary office contributed $602.24 and the basket was won by Shonna Boles.

For the last three years, the GAI IT team has been working to eliminate the use of CRT monitors and have eliminated over 90% of these. They also implemented an asset recovery program two years ago that ensures computer assets are not disposed of in landfills and emphasises reuse principles. Funds recovered from the residual value of returned assets are donated to the Golder Trust for Orphans. In 2008 their donations totalled $4,872.60.

In total 23 Golder employees attended a recent bowling outing at the Bowlero Family Fun Centre in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. The event was organized as a social outing for mainly the Windsor office staff with representation from the London and Mississauga offices. The event raised $330 CDN for the Trust.

Carlos’s Mission is situated nearly half way up the Mozambique coast 600 km north of Maputo and 15 kilometres inland from the sea. The mission is between the two main centres of Inhambane and Vilanculos. The main tar road has more potholes than tar in places and the dirt track (20km) leading to the mission is overgrown in places by the prolific tropical bush.

Carlos, who runs the mission, left Mozambique during the civil war and settled in South Africa. In 2003 he decided to return to Mozambique and returned to his family home. He managed to get his father’s land of 10 hectares returned to him by the government where the mission is currently situated. On returning he found that some of the children of his extended family had been orphaned and he took them into his home and cared for them.

On further investigation he realised that there were many orphaned children in the surrounding area that were being cared for by the communities as best they could but they were in critical need for support and so he started the mission.

There is hardly any wildlife in the area around the Mission. There is a real shortage of food as most of it has been killed and eaten. Carlos is in the process of developing his land and has started building the required infrastructure. Currently he is growing a plot of maize (corn), vegetables and pineapples. He has planted a number of fruit trees including a small plantation of pawpaws. He sells his surplus vegetables and fruit to the surrounding community. There is a well on the mission which supplies water for domestic use and for irrigation water to the crops.

Recently, with the help of the Golder Trust for Orphans he has started rearing day old chickens and then selling live grown chickens to the community. He has built a chicken house and is on his third batch of 400 chicks that he is rearing.

Carlos has also managed to purchase material that a community member will sew into school uniforms for the orphans. The mission also helps to pay for school fees for the children and in so doing attempts to give holistic support to the children.

Carlos’ chicken business is profitable and its viability is improving with each batch as Carlos learns how to become more efficient in his production methods. The surrounding community is getting to know about his chickens and his market is increasing all the time. It is planned to expand the chicken production to have three separate houses of 400 chickens so that he can get more of a continuity of supply. One of the main costs and constraints to the chicken production is the lighting of the chicken houses at night which helps the chickens grow quicker and so reduces production costs. Currently power is supplied by a small generator which uses five litres of fuel per night which is expensive and very difficult to obtain. The option of using solar power is being looked at as an alternative.

With the money that Carlos gets from the sale of fruit, vegetables and chickens he buys food that he can distribute to the households that are looking after orphans. Carlos has a list of 166 children that are either orphans or are classified as vulnerable children in the community. This list has been verified by the community leaders to make sure that no one takes advantage of the support given. The children themselves are required to come and fetch the food, which they will then give to the household that is taking care of them. The plan is to be able to distribute food in this way every two weeks.

Carlos does not have a computer so has no web site. For more information about the Mission Station of Carlos Vilanculos send an email to GolderTrustforOrphans@golder.com.