UK Charity Commission Registration Number 1120536

Newsletter 6 - October 2007
Archived: Newsletter September 2007

It is with immense pleasure that we tell you that donations to Little Stars have now reached £5,000. This is a milestone for any new charity and shows that our many supporters have faith in what is being achieved.

Little Stars was busy in Luxor throughout October as Khaled our needs assessor began examining the funding requests we received. Little Stars is about children, and about families with children that need help and unfortunately, some requests concerned the payment of operations for adults. Our remit does not cover this and we were unable to help in these cases. However, we were able to achieve great success in our education programme and many children are now at school who would have been forced to leave because of non-payment of school fees. A report from Carol is shown below:-

“I have visited an East Bank School this morning (name withheld but available on request) and paid the school fees for twenty children. I had a conducted tour of the school, was shown work done by the pupils and spoke to some of them. It was very impressive. The place was spotlessly clean and some of the work done by the kids especially the art work (which they have all over the walls) was very very good.
All the teachers were very welcoming and thanked Little Stars supporters very much. The Manager provided a receipt for the money and showed me the lady who was busy making separate receipts for each child to take to their homes to show their parents that their school fees had been paid. Now they will be able to take their half year and end of year exams and then progress to the next year.
I asked them if there was anything else we could do to help and they said that winter was coming and some of the kids only had ship ships and no jumper to wear for school. If we could help some of them with that they would be very grateful. I told them that I would mention it to you but no promises. At least we know this money has been spent wisely and not gone astray. The school was certainly quieter that British Schools, the kids well behaved and the place very clean. They had a nice playground, nothing in it but somewhere for them to kick a ball, and very nice gardens which the children under the guidance of a teacher maintain. All in all I was very impressed. The also gave me a bottle of sand with a design in, which the children had made, for Little Stars.”

The clinics for disabled children on both the east and west banks were started by the Manacare Foundation which has programmes in South Africa, Sierra Leone, Siberia, China, the Philippines and Sri Lanka as well as in Egypt. Joy, who founded Manacare is a total wonder and is at present working on the creation of a Hopes and Dreams Village for the orphans of the Tsunami in Sri Lanka. This has been a mammoth task not just in raising the funds but in overseeing the work involved. One day Little Stars and Manacare will work together to build a similar village complex in Luxor.

To relieve the administrative and financial burden on Manacare, Little Stars has, with their blessing, accepted responsibility for the clinics which will now come under Khaled’s watchful and caring eye. If you have helped these clinics in the past please continue to support them as there is still much to be done.

During October, new windows were put in the west bank clinic, at Soel (pictured above) which is on the edge of the desert. Lights and fans were replaced and the hot water system was repaired. Enquiries are being made in Cairo about skeletal stretching equipment and the availability of wheelchairs and heat lamps.

A new hydrotherapy unit was bought ready to be taken to Egypt and we thank the staff of Metrospa for the great help they gave us in choosing the right system for the job. The new system will replace the broken one which is shown above. Now that there is hot water again, hydrotherapy treatment can resume.

The staff at the west bank clinic, one of whom is also disabled, work tirelessly for the children and always remain helpful and cheerful. Thanks are given to them and to both the doctors who work there as their task calls for strength of body as well as strength of character.

Blankets and warm clothing which will soon be distributed.

The Trust Deed necessary for the registration of Little Stars UK is being drawn up and will be submitted as soon as the appropriate level of funding can be accurately assessed. Our fund raisers have pledged their full support.

None of these things could have been done without your help which has been wonderful but we need your support to continue into 2008 if we are to achieve our aims. Further equipment (like the heat lamp shown above) has to be bought for this clinic and problems over land registry need to be solved, but everything is developing well and we hope, if funding is found, to open a similar clinic to the south of Luxor so that disabled children at the lower end of the west bank can also get free treatment.

October also saw the coming of winter and although Upper Egypt is a hot dry place its winter nights are relentlessly cold. This means that we have another task to tackle. Throughout October we started identifying families with the greatest need for

If you are coming to Luxor on holiday and you can squeeze some usable children’s clothes into your bags please think of Little Stars. We can put everything to good use. Items can be left with our volunteers or just let us know and we will collect them from you. You can reach us on contact@LittleStars-Luxor.org

Copies of Newsletters 1 – 6 are available on request. Please send a large stamped addressed envelope to our UK registered office.

www.LittleStars-Luxor.org

contact@LittleStars-Luxor.org