Hello Everyone,
We have written before about our Smart Kids education sponsorship program. The program supports 33 students who are caught up in a multi generational cycle of poverty and hard labour in brick factories.
Many families live in horrible housing conditions, with a total lack of toilets, running water, electricity or bathing facilities on the brick factory land. Speaking with the families we have heard of wages that border on slavery. Some husbands and wives working together earn as little as $25 USD to produce 10,000 bricks that take about a month to make, a very difficult wage to live on. This sadly forces families to make their children, as young a six or seven, work to help boost their income so they can survive and feed themselves. The working conditions are very poor and often dangerous, with children operating machinery at a young age.
Needless to say there is not enough money to fix a leaking roof, rotting floors or disintegrating palm leaf walls. KIDS has replaced and rebuilt several houses in the last few years.
This year we partnered with the LUSH Charity Pot Program to build three new houses, rebuild 3 houses and install 6 new toilets/bathing facilities. In addition LUSH Charity Pot provided solar lighting for each of the 33 Smart Kids student's homes and large concrete jars and rain gutters to catch rain water as wells here are very difficult to drill.
One student Cha and her family actually lived in a small dark corner on the factory floor. Her mother has lived there for 27 years since she was nine years old. She told us a few years ago that she had two dreams. One was to see her daughter graduate from grade 12 and escape a life of hard labour that she has endured, that dream will be realized soon as Cha is now half way through grade eleven thanks to KIDS donors. The other dream was to have a home of her own and to live outside the brick factory.......this dream will come to a reality very soon.
We started the homes a month ago and the LUSH team of 23 arrived to help finish them. We will send along and update on their work and of the completed housing project in a few days.
Wishing you and yours all the very best,
Rick and Adrianne
