Friends Of Matthew Rusike Children's Home
Registered charity 1120944
The Chairman’s report covering 2010 is now available. Shelley Cooling has been accepted as a Mission Partner by the Methodist Church in Britain. Her placement at the Home will begin in 2011 and be for a minimum of 3 years. She will be starting her training early in 2011.
2010 has also seen several church groups and circuits promising a year of support/fundraising for the Home.
The Home’s report for 2008 is now available. A few of the key achievements are:
The Treasurer’s report for 2009 is now available. Our best year to date, we raised a total of £65,000. Due to inflation difficulties in Zimbabwe we are now making payments to the Home in US dollars. Some of the funds raised this year have been held in reserve for the Creche project for which we have commited to supplying £12,000 in 2009. We can also proudly announce that as usual our expenses were incredibly low (£36 for the year).
Cambridge Road Methodist Church in Birmingham have been using gift cards to fund raise with great success. The following report is by their co-ordiantor Debbie (July 2007).
We have been using Gift Cards to raise money for MRCH. This year we raised a total of £400. In previous years we have raised as much as £700! This year, some of the gifts were gift-aided which will add about £90.00 to the overall total. This has involved a bit more administrative work for me to do, but well worth it for the additional money. We have provided a choice of gift cards in £5, £10 and £20 denominations stating on each card roughly what the money would buy (e.g. £5 for school shoes and shoe-laces; £10 towards a month’s medication for a child with HIV; £20 towards equipment for refurbishing the crèche). It’s been well worth the effort. In comparison with other fundraising efforts, it’s not very labour intensive. To offer gift cards just print off templates from the MRCH Resources section and then take orders and keep track of the gift aid. If anyone would like to do this at their Church or work-place next year, I would be happy to help or forward on the templates we have developed. You can contact me via the Chairman. One bit of advice would be to start early! E.g. end of November for Christmas – I was a bit late this year and it made it a bit frantic! The Gift Cards can also be used for one-off gifts for special occasions – for example, my Gran recently celebrated her 100th Birthday and was given over £200 which she decided to donate to MRCH. It was nice to be able to create a presentable Gift Card to give to her.
A visitor on a business trip to MRCH in June 2005 made the following observations:
“There seems to be an air of depression about the situation as well as uncertainty created by the clearance programme. The fuel situation is awful, people waiting in queues overnight, or for 7-8 hour stretches during the day, mostly unsuccessful. Shortages worse than ever, so MRCH is affected as well. They have had to stop the chicken programme because they can’t get the feed – hence no eggs for sale or for the children to eat. Pig breeding has also stopped and slowly the pigs are being sold off. The garden remains the only sustainability project in operation. And so….. money from overseas is critical to their survival in the short, medium and long term”