Our Blog Has Moved

Welcome to the blog of Vision Africa - Give a Child a Future.

Our blog has now moved and you can follow the latest views and thoughts of our staff at the following location: http://www.vision-africa.org/blog/

Here are some other web links where you can find out more about what we do.

OUR WEB SITES:

Vision Africa: http://www.vision-africa.org

Seed of Hope: http://www.seedofhope.info

Vision Africa Staff Blog: http://www.vision-africa.org/blog/

Vision Africa News Updates: http://www.vision-africa.org/news/

NEWS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING:

Facebook Fan Page: http://www.facebook.com/visionafrica

Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=35493762907

Twitter: http://twitter.com/VisionAfrica

You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/user/VisionAfricaGCF

Vision Africa Blog on Kabissa: http://www.kabissa.org/group/vision-africa-blog

The blog is dead, long live the blog!

Or I guess I should say... The Chairman's blog is dead, long live the Staff blog!

This will be the final post on the old Vision Africa Chairmans Blog powered by 'Blogger' as we have moved to a new 'Wordpress' powered staff blog. This new blog gives us the opportunity to open the blog up to other Vision Africa staff members so we should be able to bring you more frequent updates.

Thanks to everyone who has followed my blog over the past two and a half years. All the old posts have been moved over and I'll still be posting on the new blog so please change your bookmarks to point at www.vision-africa.org/blog/ and if you're following via RSS feed, please change your feedreader settings to www.vision-africa.org/news/feed/.

Thanks... See you on the new Blog!

Bob.

A new year, a new challenge.

Well, before I try to put my thoughts in order for this blog posting let me start the year by wishing you a very happy new year! If you're a regular Vision Africa supporter let me offer my sincere thanks for your support in 2009. And thanks for taking the time to read my blog.

I suppose the traditional thing to do at this time of year is to look back on the previous year and highlight successes and challenges, as well as looking forward to the coming year. So, let me try to do that in not too many words.

For me 2009 was probably the most challenging year for Vision Africa since we started (the word 'challenge' seems to feature a lot at the moment!). It was a year when the realities of global recession took hold and made themselves felt in our world. For Vision Africa it meant less income, fewer sponsors and increased costs due to rising food prices, drought causing food shortages and more children in proverty, and the cumulative impact of the generally poor economic situation. Much stricter financial planning has been, and continues to be, key to our viability and continuing the good work we have built up over the past eight or nine years.

Here in the UK the impact is one on budgets and decision making, but in Africa it is upon lives. We have had to force our Field Directors to make some difficult decisions and choices about which projects we could continue to support and to what level. The main priority, of course, being to continue to help as many of the most needy and vulnerable children as possible. I am pleased to say they responded magnificently and with great imagination to allow us to continue to be amazingly effective.

One of the key selling points of a charity like ours are the low overheads and value for money we offer to our supporters (see my previous posts for thoughts on this subject). This is still the case and will continue to be our goal in the year ahead. I think you will agree that we cover a lot of ground and are extremely effective for a fairly small charity.

There is a lot we would like to do in 2010. However, our priority will be maintaining the work we have already started and ensuring continuing support to our existing projects. When finances allow we will look towards further expansion, but for now we must cut our cloth to suit our means. One project we will move forward with if circumstances allow is to relocate our Nairobi Seed of Hope Centre from the current rented property to a more purpose built centre. It has been a frustration to us for a long time that we have to rent property which sees money dissapearing for little benefit, so this will be a priority in 2010.

The big area of change over 2009 and into 2010 is with our Staff. 2009 saw the retirement of founder and Field Director John Packard, and the promotion to Field Director of Deborah Kimathi alongside co-director Vera Packard. Vera is now in the process of handing the reigns over to Deborah in many respects, so I suspect 2010 will see further changes in this respect. As we look back on 2009 I must put firmly on record my thanks to John and Vera for all they have done for Vision Africa, from first concept in 2001 until the present day. Thanks to their tirelss energy and vision many thousands of children now have much brighter prospects of a secure future. I have huge confidence in Deborah as she continues to drive our work forward in 2010 and would also thank her for her tremendous contribution to the success of Vision Africa and her seemingly boundless energy!

The other area of staff changes are with our Child Sponsorship programme. In Kenya Vera has handed over the day to day running of this to Vincent Kegode, and in the UK our long time sponsorship secretary Betty Waugh is in the process of handing over to our new sponsorship secretary - Tracey Kennedy. Tracey brings further diversification of our UK voluntary staff as she is based in Northern Ireland. It's good to have strong representation from England, Scotland and Northern Irleand - all we need now is the Welsh connection! Huge thanks go to Betty for everything she has done for Vision Africa over the years, and a big welcome to Tracey!

I will finish thinking about Staff matters with a word of thanks to all our staff in Kenya for their contributions in 2009. I've mentioned our Field Directors, but there are others that should be recognised: Kirsty McLullich for her admin and fundraising activities and for keeping the news, facebook and twitter up-to-date; Vincent for his work in managing the sponsorship programme and his role in Kibera football; Maureen Mwende for the Crafted programme and John Kiboro for his continuing dedication to Vision Africa and Kandara Children's home. Also I would mention the members of our Kenya council of Reference, volunteers and interns who have spent time with us, and not least all those who are engaged in the running and supporting of our various projects. Thank you all!

So, here we stand on the threshold of another year. Lots of challenges behind us and lots more to come. I am looking forward to heading back out to Kenya in February to see first hand how your money is being spent and to help with some of the transition planning that is currently taking place. I hope I will be able to bring you a good report back sometime in March. Meantime I would value your thoughts and prayers as we step into 2010. Together we will make a difference and together we will give many more children the future they deserve. Thank you!

Value for money

One of the hardest things for a small charity like ours is to raise sufficient funds to keep all our projects going and allow us to further expand. Most larger charities employ at least one full time fundraiser or a fundraising team, and they will have a significant budget for advertising and publicity. Of course all this costs a significant amount to set up and get running before they start to realise the benefits of doing this. In addition, the overheads of the charity will increase considerably to fund this ongoing commitment to fund raising. Which all makes the decision whether to employ professional fundraisers a difficult balance against best value for our supporters.

We at Vision Africa are probably sitting at that point where we are raising as much as we can through our existing methods and support base. This means we are probably doing as much as we can with our resources in Kenya without going down the route of putting the charity on a more professional footing in the UK. However, one of our key 'selling points' to our supporters is our low overheads of less than 2% of our income. We can only do this because all our UK staff are part time volunteers who work for Vision Africa in their spare time, motivated by a heart of compassion for the children in Africa which we support.

So, why have I focused on this at this time? Well, quite by chance I was reading the annual report of another charity with similar aims to our own earlier this week. What struck me was they had raised something like four times the amount that we raised in the same period, but their overheads were about 35% of their income on a like for like comparison. In addition when I looked at their stated achievements for the year I immediately had the feeling that they had actually achieved somewhat less than us.

Now of course, that is not a fair statement based on a ten minute reading of their annual report. However, it did make me think about the future for Vision Africa. We are immensely pleased with the considerable achievements we have made with our limited resources. But, can we go on to continue to achieve considerably more without changing our model? I think not personally when I look back at the struggle we've had over the past year to raise the funds we need. It's an interesting and difficult dilemma.

Perhaps for now the answer is that we need more UK volunteers to fund raise for us. There is so much we want to do, and so much need and want out there. It would be a shame to have to break our 'virtual charity' model which keeps our overheads so low, but does the need justify changing the model to raise more funds? Put another way, do the ends justify the means? Answers on a postcard please!

The big challenge

I often struggle to think what to say on this blog, which is why there are sometimes long gaps between posts. Actually there's a lot to say, but I don't want to bore people with the same old things all the time. But this month, I really want to use the blog to say thank you.

We recently entered the Global Giving challenge to win a spot on the Global Giving web site. This is a big deal for us because it's a great avenue for our US based supporters to be able to give to our work in a Tax efficient way. Winning a permanent presence on Global Giving opens the door for new sources of much needed funding.

The challenge for us was to get a minimum of 50 unique donors to give at least $4000 (about £2500) in one month. Our chosen project was to provide support for our Seed of Hope programme which really does need extra support at this time, especially as we lost a major benefactor earlier this year. Seed of Hope is a wonderful programme which provides vocational training for destitute teenage girls who would otherwise have little to look forward to in life.

Well, using the power of the web, facebook and twitter and our email list we put out the appeal and I am so pleased to say our friends and supporters responded magnificently. We made our challenge goal with a few days to spare and we now have our place on GG. Well done and thank you!! It really is good to know that even in this time of recession, which is proving a bit of a struggle for us, that there are lots of folks out there still willing to give. My sincere thanks to all.

Now, what's next on the list? Ah yes, sponsorship for the Kibera Football.

Keeping up to date

I don't think I'm very good at this blog thing. I never seem to manage to find the time to sit down and post anything!

There's been a lot going on with Vision Africa over the past few months so I hope you've managed to keep up with the news on our web site. If you're interested I have just issued our Summer 2009 newsletter, which you can find here: http://www.vision-africa.org/get_involved/newsletter.php

I guess the main thing that concerns me just now is the impact of the worldwide economic situation, which is having serious consequences for our work. In Kenya inflation is running high and even the basics (food!) are costing considerably more. This means that more people a falling even deeper into poverty and more children need our support, however our costs are significantly increasing for the same reason. Add to this the significant downturn in giving and you can quickly see that we are under real financial pressure. The impact of this is that we have to make hard decisions about what projects we can support in the coming year and how to best deploy our resources for maximum impact.

Our AGM is coming up soon and this conundrum will certainly be top of our agenda.

As a Christian organisation we very much believe in the power of prayer. We know that many of our supporters share this belief and so we have decided to introduce the concept of prayer partners. It's just a simple email mailing list really, but it will allow us to share our needs with those who are willing to set aside a little time to pray for our work. If you're interested in joining please take a look here: http://www.vision-africa.org/get_involved/prayer_partners.php Thank you.

Anyway, that's it for now. Don't forget you can also find us on facebook and now on twitter! Check out the newsletter for details.

Drought continues

If you've had a look at our news pages you will have seen that drought is once again causing problems for the people of Kenya. Of course, it is the destitute that suffer most because they cannot just head for the supermarkets and pay the inflated prices for food. We are seeing drought affecting our work as we are having to pay the extra costs to supplement the food that would have normally been grown locally, and pay the higher prices too.

For us the drought comes at a difficult time because the current economic climate also means people are more reluctant to part with their money, or in some cases simply don't have the money any longer due to redundancy etc.. We've also lost a few sponsors which puts extra strain on our finances. So we have increasing demand, increasing costs and potentially decreasing income. This will be a key focus for us at our next Board meeting in April as we look at our priorities for the coming year. Meantime, if you are able to help even with a small donation we would be really grateful.

Changing the topic... We now have a group on Facebook, so if you're on Facebook please join the group! We've set ourselves a challenge to get 500 supporters on there and we are about half way just now. You can find us here: www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=35493762907

Anyway, that's all for now. Please keep an eye on our news pages for the latest updates and for our Spring newsletter which will be out soon.