Have you ever been to Swaziland? Many people may have never even heard of this tiny African country. Sitting tucked between Mozambique and South Africa, this small kingdom has an interesting history and faces enormous challenges in the present.
Swaziland has the world's LOWEST life expectancy. The average lifespan for a Swazi is only 37 years! A large part of this is due to the crisis of HIV/AIDS. Swaziland has the world's HIGHEST rate of HIV infection in the world (26% of adults). All of this leads to another very sad reality.
As of 2010, exactly 23.3% of the children in Swaziland are orphans. This is where the name of our project comes from. With so many orphans in a country with so much extreme poverty (60% of people in Swaziland live on less than $2 per day), there must be something that can be done to help.
(A woman in Vuvualne weaving a reed mat -- one of the few sources of income in the village.)
Every idea has to start somewhere. For Project 23.3, the starting point is the small village of Vuvulane. Sitting among the vast sugar cane fields in Eastern Swaziland, this village is about as different from life in middle class America as you can imagine. There is no electricity. There is no plumbing or running water. Homes are made of reeds and mud bricks. Children collect water from the nearby ponds. Tragically, just in the last year, 2 children were killed by crocodiles while collecting water. It's hard to imagine children who are more in need of a helping hand.
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| A Vuvulane girl, carrying water for drinking. |
This is where we can come in to make a difference. The people of Vuvulane have asked for help to build a preschool: a place where the small children can be safe during the day and begin an education -- probably the only thing which offers real hope for escaping this level of extreme poverty. The building would also be used in the afternoons for other social programs: prenatal support for pregnant women, skill-building workshops, and even HIV testing. A building was started ... but funding ran out and now for several months the structure has sat unfinished.
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| The half-completed preschool of Vuvulane. |
Our plan is to finish this preschool and help the children of Vuvulane build a future. This project was started by a 15-year-old in Michigan who was tired of the thought that American teenagers were unmotivated and self-absorbed. Why not join together to prove that idea wrong? Why not help make a real difference for children in the world who don't have all the opportunities that we do?
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| Some of the children, eager to learn. |
We are trying to raise $20,000 to complete this preschool and get it running. We have partnerships on the ground in Swaziland who are commited to providing the operating costs for the school and monitoring the progress. No money will be wasted, and 100% goes directly to the school for the children. We can't fix every problem for every orphan and every child in poverty in the world, but we can start here. Do you want to join us and remind these 23.3% of children in Swaziland that we haven't forgotton about them too?
