Holiday Challenge Week 4: Expanded Garden

Our staff has been busy preparing more of our land for additional garden space, and now we're ready to plant! We'd love to grow carrots, spinach, squash, peppers, watermelon, and eggplant - all of which will provide a healthy diet to the children and vulnerable families in our village.

Will you help us reach our $40 goal to purchase seeds and supplies? Visit GoFundMe to support this vital project!

Holiday Challenge Update: Thank You!

Thank you to everyone who has supported us this month! We've had several extremely generous donations during our Holiday Challenge, and we're grateful.

Thanks to you, all 4 of our kindergarten graduates will be receiving new uniforms and brand new shoes as they get ready to enter 1st grade in January. Thanks to you, we have extra funds to put toward a new sprinkler system in a garden that is determined to overcome drought. Thanks to you, we will be able to purchase new supplies for Kanchi's classroom.

Lives are being changed as the people of our community experience God's love through the gifts of food and education. Lives are also being changed across the world as people put their finances - and their faith - into this project. Thank you for your support!

Holiday Challenge Week 3: School Supplies

While some of you are gearing up for Christmas break, our students in Namibia are getting ready for a new school year. We want to kick off 2017 with a classroom that is set up for success. We already have a talented teacher (Kanchi); now we want to provide the class with new school supplies.

If you value education and want to see these kids blossom, consider joining us in week 3 of our giving challenge. Every gift will go a long way in supplying the basic necessities Kanchi's students need.

How can you help?

• Visit GoFundMe to donate $5, $10, or more!
• Organize a collection. Here are some items that provide the most value:
• Coloring Books
• Flash Cards/Wall Charts (Numbers, Letters, Shapes, Vocabulary)
• Digital Materials
• Support us through prayer. 
• Share this post on Facebook to let your friends know how they can help.

Holiday Challenge Week 2: Garden Sprinklers

A few weeks ago, we shared with you how severe the drought has been - and the measures we're taking to prevent further damage. We expanded our cistern well in order to store more water, but now we need to improve how we deliver that water to our crops.

For about $300 per section of vegetables, we can upgrade and expand our sprinkler system so that the extreme heat does not scorch the plants. If hunger and nutrition are important to you, please consider supporting this vital ministry. Preserving the garden will ensure that the kids in our kindergarten and hungry families in our village will have a healthy food source year round. 

Remember, we aren't asking for any one person to support this entire effort - but every dollar helps. If each of our supporters chipped in $5 or $10, we'd have enough to fund the entire garden!

Visit GoFundMe to donate online. Thank you for your support!

Cistern Expansion Project, November 2016

Holiday Challenge Week 1: Kindergarten Grads

It's week 1 of our Holiday Challenge, and we're kicking it off with some very special individuals.

This year, we have 4 students graduating from our kindergarten and gearing up for Grade 1. We would love to provide each of them with a school uniform and shoes, which will cost $25 each.

Will you join us in showing love and support for these students? Let us know if you will sponsor one of them financially or through prayer.

Kindergarten Graduates

Imbuwa Inonge 

Makena Muyunda

Matengu Tabo Happy

Samunzala Ntwala

Holiday Challenge

As the Christmas season draws near, we are reminded of how blessed we are: we have faithful financial donors, people following us online and praying for our projects, and several extremely dedicated individuals serving on the front lines.

But this holiday season, we want to challenge you to take the next step. If you have ever considered supporting Sinanzi, this is the perfect time of year to give generously. Each week leading up to Christmas, we will reveal a new project or individual that you can support.

Here are a few ways that you can help:

• Give Online: You can give a one-time or recurring donation through GoFundMe.
• Team Up: Every dollar counts, and it can add up quickly! Choose one of our weekly initiatives, and then recruit your family, friends, church, or co-workers to reach that goal. 
• Pray: Pray for each of the individuals and projects that we share over the next month. Challenge yourself to pray daily.
• Share: One of the biggest impacts you can have is spreading the word. Please share our posts on Facebook, and tell your friends about Sinanzi. The dramatically increases our reach online and around the world, resulting in more support and more awareness.

Thank you for your support! Stay tuned for our first weekly giving opportunity.

Dealing With Drought

Just google "Namibia" and "drought," and you'll find countless news articles describing how desperate the situation is right now. While some of our crops are scorched, we believe there is still an opportunity to save the rest of the garden.

We've begun a big project: expanding our existing cistern. This well collects what rainwater we do get, and retains it for periods of drought. We'll need big equipment and big support!

If you are able to help us with this project, please visit GoFundMe to help us raise $200. Your generosity will help us recover the remaining crops and continue to provide healthy food for our students and community!

July Update... testing a new way to post photos

We are testing a new way to post photos.  If the slides don't begin to play on their own, please press the play button to automatically flip through photos.

If you want to expand it to full screen, please press:   found below the slides.
Give us feedback! What do you think of this way of viewing photos?

Caring for widows and orphans

L-R: Makole, Elton, Regina 

One of the major goals of our work in Namibia is to care for the vulnerable people of Musanga region. No one is more vulnerable than the widows and orphans. 

We regret to say one of the widows we have been supporting with vegetables from SSP passed away on Thursday.  She was a relative of Elton's who was caring for her orphaned granddaughter.  Her name was Makole.

If any of you have ever been to Katima Mulilo and drove on the main road past Elton's village, you would often see her working tirelessly in the fields trying to grow something out of nothing to feed herself and her family. She, and the many widows like her, are the reason we felt compelled to continue our mission. 

She was a very strong woman.  The situation for widows is always quite bleak but she was particularly destitute because of her blindness and the fact that all of her children are dead leaving her to care for all of her grandchildren alone.

Being that she was a elderly widow with very little family, we have been asked to assist in her funeral costs. A donation of $66USD (equal to N$1000) would buy a coffin and contribute to the traditional meal served after the funeral. 

If you are interested in contributing to this cause and  the continuing work of Sinanzi Sepo Project, please make donations to:

https://www.gofundme.com/SinanziSepoProject

Please join us as we pray for Elton's village,  her adult grandchildren and especially for her youngest granddaughter, who had still been under her care. She will feel her absence the most acutely and her future is now more uncertain as she will need a new caregiver. 

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1 : 27

The end of the drought

Finally the end of the drought has come. Between some rain locally and flood waters coming from up river, we have a good supply of water.  This below is the flood plain just adjacent to the garden.  We will have an excellent water supply for the months ahead!

This is where we can pump water from to our sprinkler system.  

Katima Mulilo is heading into the winter season as we head into summer here in NY.  The workers have cleared some new areas and have started plots of vegetables that will grow well in the colder weather that is ahead in June, July and August.  

Cabbage seedings

As we expand the garden with some new plots, we are going to need to purchase some additional pipes and sprinkler heads. Please let us know if you are interested in sponsoring this expansion!

We are very grateful for a special donation that made uniforms possible for our garden workers.  Not only are they sturdy clothes that can withstand hard work, they are much warmer than regular clothes for the winter months ahead.  

Our garden staff
R-L: Joseph, Reuben, Puniso 

FACEBOOK

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Have you "liked" us on FACEBOOK?   If not, check it out!

https://www.facebook.com/SinanziSepoProject

Thriving garden despite the drought

The rainfall in the Caprivi/Zambezi Region has been very sporadic this year causing drought conditions. We have been very fortunate at the Sinanzi Garden because of 2 reasons: 1) the plot of land we are using is near a swam area. While there is little standing water or flooding as there might normally be, it is still a wet area.  2) Elton had the foresight to have a reservoir/well dug down to the underground water table near the edge of the plot.  When all else is dry, for the most part our reservoir has water.  They are able to then pump the water into a holding tank that flows out to the many sprayers and hoses.  

The workers have begun to prepare some new plots to plant the next crops....

We can never have enough cabbage, kale, tomatoes and onions to go around.  These are everyone's favorite vegetables and staples of the diet.

As is corn... major part of everyone's diet.  Pictured here is our garden manager, Joseph and one of our workers, Samuel. 

 In the center of this photo, you can see the pumpkin plants doing quite well.  Both the pumpkin and the leaves can be eaten.

When the corn was ready to harvest, volunteers from the church and community distributed it to many widows in need.  

We are beginning to expand our long-term goals of the garden by also planting fruit trees. Pictured here are 3 guava bushes.  While they take longer to grow, we hope that one day they will be great producers!

If you look very carefully around the leaves at the bottom of this last photo, you can see that despite the very small size of this tree, it has already started producing some guava!  

Kicking off the new school year - January 2016

The school year in Namibia begins in January.  We registered 24 students for this year so far!

Here are a few of them in the photo below:

We try to provide them with breakfast or morning snack and lunch while they are with us for the school day. When crops from our Sinanzi Garden aren't ready to harvest, we supplement with what we can afford to buy in the shops.  This day they are eating rice mixed with ketchup and/or mayonnaise. It is our prayer to increase our monthly budget to be able to be able to buy more groceries, such as fish, chicken or beans, when we aren't able to supplement with garden veggies.  

Due to the drought conditions this region has been facing since December, a lot of fresh food items are difficult to obtain and are expensive, especially meat and fish.  Read more about how God has been blessing our garden despite the rain in the next blog post: Thriving garden despite drought

Kool-Aid and biscuits for breakfast