Food for thought

I have been spending a lot of time working on the redesign of the Vision Africa web site. So far so good, but progress is very slow while I fine tune the look and feel of the site and get the structure sorted out.

I am trying to make the site design standards compliant using what they call CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets. Now if these were truely a universal standard then life would be fairly straightforward, but different browsers treat the CSS in different ways so a page that renders nicely in Internet Explorer may look a little different in Firefox. But even more frustrating is that Internet Explorer handles CSS differently depending on which version - IE6 is particularly quirky in this respect. So I get a page looking the way I want it on my laptop (which has IE7, Firefox3, Safari and Google Chrome browsers) and then I look at it on my work machine only to see that IE6 has done something odd. Grr - it's certainly enough to test my patience!

Frustrations aside the redisign is going well and I hope to put a trial version of the site up for testing sometime before Christmas and hopefully do a launch of the revised site in the new year. Watch this space for more progress.

I titled this post 'Food for Thought' because this evening I have started drafting our next email newsletter and one item in particular is on my mind. The cost of food in Kenya has gone through the roof, doubling and doubling again in the space of just a few months. Now Vision Africa operates feeding programmes in various schools and in the children's homes and we are probably feeding something in the order of 1000 children every day. With this in mind you can see that we have a big problem on our hands in the cost of providing this vital food to the childen in our bailiwick. So we have started our 'Food for Thought' programme where we are asking our supporters and groups in the UK to try to hold local fundraising events to generate funds for food.

Rather than me rattling on about this, below is an extract from a recent letter we sent out to our supporters....

Until next time.

Bob.

___________________________________________

Food for Thought!

What did you eat today?
Did you go hungry?
No? Me neither!

You will have no doubt heard on the news that world food prices are shooting up and you will have noticed the price increases in your local supermarket. However for most of us in the UK this doesn’t mean that we will go hungry.

For people in Kenya it is a different story. As you know Vision Africa feeds 2000 children and teenagers everyday. However as prices double, triple and quadruple this is becoming more and more difficult.

A bag of maize meal, the most basic food, used to cost 35KS now its 95KS

A bag of rice used to cost 1100KS, now its 3000KS

A bag of beans only last month cost 2400KS, now its 4600K

These prices will only get higher as there will be no more crops until the rains come at the end of Oct. Vision Africa can’t and won’t stop feeding these children but to do so we need your help!

Over the next few months we are asking you to help us feed hungry children in Kenya by holding your very own food related fundraising event.

Invite your friends to lunch, dinner, for a BBQ or picnic and ask for donations.
Organise a coffee morning or afternoon tea and ask each one of your guests to pay to come along. Hold a cake sale at your work place, school, church or village hall. Even put together a hamper and sell raffle tickets.

If you would like one of our collection boxes please email boxes@vision-africa.org

Once your event is over please send a cheque made payable to Vision Africa for the amount you raise to our Treasurer Barbara Hewitt:

3 Wadebridge Avenue, Baguley, Manchester, M23 9LS

We very much hope that you will have great fun organizing and holding your event and we would love to hear your stories and see any photos. Thank you in advance for your time and effort, it really does make a difference.