THANK YOU – BY FIONA LUKE

Dear Friends/Family

Thank you all for your support, kind words, prayers and well wishes.

I would like to report that on Sunday 20th September 2009 Sophia Jackson (Tebbs SC PR Consultant) and I travelled to Sierra Leone for the final stage of the 2009 Stationery Drive.

After a six hour journey we arrived in a very hot but rainy Sierra Leone ready and armed for the work ahead. The helicopter ride from Lungi airport to Freetown was an eventful one … we had a long delay of two hours and Sophia was able to make friends with a cockroach … NOT!

We spent the whole of Tuesday locked up in my aunt’s house sorting out the stationery for the project. I didn’t realise how much we had collected until I saw all the items in one room.

Wednesday 23rd September we visited Lisam Preparatory School in Juba Hill Freetown Sierra Leone, with 220 students and almost all of them in attendance on that day.

The expression on the children’s faces when they saw us made the whole journey worthwhile!

Each child was able to receive a plastic carrier bag printed with the Tebbs SC logo containing 2 exercise books, 2 pencils, an eraser, a sharpener, a ruler and 2 pens. The school received 1,000 reading books which will encourage the children to read.

On Thursday 24th September we visited Bavia School in Congo Town Freetown Sierra Leone. This school had 140 students. If you can imagine 140 kids in one room screaming with excitement … it took us a while to calm them all down. Each child at this school received one of the many school bags we managed to collect, containing the same items that we gave to the Lisam kids.

We spent our remaining time in Sierra Leone investigating new schools for the 2010 project.

I thank God for all He has done with this project and for the success of the trip.

Once again, I cannot thank you all enough for your generous donations and support. Due to the overwhelming success of this project we have decided to do it again. This time, the school we are aiming to help is called Hi-Lance Int School, based in Kingtom, Freetown. We are aiming to bring the same smile to the faces of these children …