[Photos: children in the orphanage playing games, socializing, or eagerly awaiting a nearby visitor ]

Family Health Ministries has supported the orphanage in Fondwa, building a new facility for 50 children before the January 2010 earthquake. Because the Fatima House orphanage was damaged, the now 60 children are living in temporary wooden structures. FHM continues to provide daily meals, clothing, and schooling for the children with the help of many sponsors.

Many of the children are not true orphans, but rather from poor families that can not care for and feed them. Often children are placed in the orphanage after their parents bring them to the local health clinic near death from starvation.

When Family Health Ministries first began working with the Association of Peasants of Fondwa (APF), the children slept in a primitive structure without running water or electricity, but the children were clean, clothed and well loved. So FHM worked with APF to design and build a structure of concrete. All of the sleeping rooms had been completed; water and a generator had just been installed.

[Photos: (left) the original orphanage in Fondwa; and (right) the new structure after the quake Mission groups who visit the children in Fondwa often ask what to bring]

This list was provided by Jamalyn Peigh Williamson, FHM's Fondwa Project Manager and past missionary in Fondwa.  We recommend consulting with your mission team leader about the best way to distribute whatever you bring.