Southern Cross Students Need Your Sponsorship...

YouthCom. and the Marafiki Community have been long-distance friends for a year now. And sometimes we need to reach out and give our friends a helping hand.

Now is the time we need your help.

The Southern Cross Academy officially opened in May 2010. It's name stems from the Australian volunteer who raised the funds to build the school. It now has almost 300 internally displaced students (IDP's) enrolled and has been a monumental development in this impoverished community. Before the establishment of this school, the children living within the IDP-camps had no access to education and in some case had not been in a formal education setting for over 2 years. The Southern Cross Academy has bridged this gap and now offer a full range of educational initiative including a water project and school library.However, the school is in desperate need for student sponsorship.

Student sponsorship is as little as $7 per month per student. This amount provides school supplies, morning tea and lunch for students, teachers salaries,teaching aids and the payment of fees required for standard examinations in order to ensure a free education for the children of the surrounding IDP camps.

Currently YouthCom has collected 10 IDP students sponsorships for a 6 month period. But we need your help to get more.

We ask you to;

1) Sponsor a student
2) Spread the word. Tell your mum, tell your best friends, tell your hairdressers, tell your butchers, or just tell anyone who will listen,about the Southern Cross Academy.
3) Ask them to get on board and contact youthcomaustralia@gmail.com

We are asking for all the sponsorships we can handle and more!

Right now, a little bit of help from our friends is all we need.

For more information on Marafiki and The Southern Cross Academy visit: http://marafikicommunity.org/

Toys From Trash

The world as we know it, is changing. In many ways we have no real choice in the matter. But for a large part we can act as active citizens of the planet and take time to make better use of the materials we still have around us, in a more sustainable fashion. Lets take example from these young Kenyans.These boys are not in a position to purchase toys the way in which western children can. So instead have taken old plastic bags, newspapers and sisal string to make a soccer ball. The act of creating such an item out of nothing more than landfill is not only educational and sustainable but also far more rewarding than buying a poorly made,borderline disposable toy off a global-bully's shop shelf. If only people in the western world could take a lesson from those less fortunate and make do with what they have...Child's play isn't it?



For more "Toys from Trash" ideas and instructions visit:
http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/toys.html