Question 3

Most specifically, what needs are being directly addressed as a result of funding from MCF?

Marina Christian Fellowship has been instrumental in helping this entire ministry to be launched into the Sudan! It was your initial investment of $10,000 that helped Steven to travel there to continue building crucial relationships with the local leaders and villagers. With this additional investment just received ( $20,000) we have been able to not only move further to reach our goals for Phase one but also to support the staff and feed these needy children and orphans.
These are the needs that so far have been directly addressed as a result of funding from MCF:
1. Enabled key leadership (Steven Reech, Zacharia Maluk, Abraham Mayen Kon) to move from Kenya and Uganda to set up life at the Southern Sudan ministry site of Kolmarek.
2. Helped with the costs of purchasing and trucking vital construction materials and supplies from Kenya to Kolmarek in January. These initial supplies include 100 bags of cement, roofing timber, iron sheeting, fence wire, food for the children, seeds.
3. Helped with the labor costs for constructing the roofs of the first three School and Training Center structures.
4. Helped with a second truck of supplies in April. These vital supplies needed to reach Kolmarek before the rains began (Apri15th) so that construction and the feeding program could continue. Steven personally escorted these supplies as well as carried funds given by MCF to pay the teachers and staff their compensation for their ministry service up through April.
NEEDS BEING ADDRESSED BY MCF:
* 180 children most of whom have been malnourished are now being fed three important meals each week.
* 15 orphaned children are being feed three meals a day and live in simple temporary shelters.
* Vital construction materials have been trucked into Sudan from Kenya which will enable us to complete one building for the school campus, one building for the Training Center, and one structure to house the orphans (while the permanent orphanage is constructed later this year and into next year - We already have a donor willing to cover this Orphanage/Boarding facility cost).
* MFC has provided funds to support the teachers in this new Christian School for the first several months of its existence. This is extremely significant in that this is the first school in this area teaching children for over a decade - all schools and in fact most of the village was destroyed during the war. MCF has helped initiate and support this important Christian school with food for the children and with support for the teachers and construction materials for several of the permanent buildings now being constructed.
* MFC has invested in the school books for the school. Steven Reech just two weeks ago returned to Kenya to be able to visit his family as well as to return with more construction materials as well as supplies for the school. he returned with over $1,000 value in school text books. Before this the teachers were teaching from the one book that they alone had as they would read out loud from the text book and then write some things on the chalk board (two of the four classrooms did not even have a chalk board).
* MFC has provided the chalk boards for each class room and writing books for each of the over 170 children in the school!
*MFC has provided a portion of the funds needed to be able to buy the fencing posts and wire to demark the Empowering Lives Sudan School / Children's Home / Skills for Life Training Center Property.