Todays update from Emma and Jenish ..

Jenish and Emma have had a busy couple days .  A lot of traveling around getting caught up on many different tasks.  Some times it is the untold stories that will have the greatest impact.. time will tell, but for now I will share some of what they did today .   

One of the tasks was to get another pump for the Childrens rehab centre .. A few weeks ago we replaced the main water pump there so that they would have water again, but we also found out that the circulating pump for the heating system was on the blink, so today Jenish brought them out a new one to keep them warm 

Emma had a chance to spend some time with the girls from Dayspring .. they did some crafts 

We heard that some of the kids in one of the orphanages were having difficulty in school , so Emma and Kamalla started to help them with homework.  But they found something disturbing .. The kids did not have text books.  How can you learn with no books ?  .. So Emma went to the school to get to the bottom of it.  She as told that the books were out of print, and its just good enough that they are in the class .. Obviously this was not acceptable to Emma , and since there are no copy right laws there, She took the matter in her own hands and started producing all the needed books for the classes.   

Math , Russian, Kyrgyz,  Chemistry& Physics 

And since she did not want them to feel that they are getting anything other then the best , she , and Stasic ( the budgie )  made each book personalized for the student that would receive them 

It's important that these kids know that they are special...  

 One of the young girls that we have been helping, wanted to find a job so that she can start to support herself,  but unfortunately after finding herself in harms way twice in the last year, she has to be very careful, so Emma has talked to her and she has agreed that for the time being we will hire her to help make some tushicks for us .  So today she and Emma went to the bazaar to look and see what they had there for sale, and what the prices where .. They found lots of different styles , like the ones below . 

There are many different styles there .. The tushuks are found stacked on top of each other in the main room of almost every Kyrgyz home or Yurt.  They are used to sit on around the table ( on the floor) as well as for sleeping on at night .  the average one is about 2 feet wide and about 10 feet long.   they can be folded over for extra comfort, rolled up on the ends to act as a pillow.. very versatile . 

My reason for looking at these is that they are VERY labour intensive.   We have been trying to keep Aigulla and others busy , but the  blankets and regular mattresses are not that labour intensive, so we have a low profit margin for them , and we can  not afford to buy enough  to give them a good wage,.. the material costs are too high.  The tushicks will be a lot cheaper material wise , and can use a lot of small pieces, but very Labour intensive, and will sell at a higher cost, so the majority of the cost is Labour.. which is what we need to help them keep food on the table and coal in the stove.  So watch and see , shortly we may have these beautiful tushuks available for sale ..   

A little update on the blanket Challenge .. we have 4 days left in the food drive, and we have a very long way to go if we are going to get food delivered to everywhere we wanted .. the kids are getting a little concerned, they don't want to have to start deciding who they will or won't be able to help.. it would just be so much nicer if everyone made a little donation now, and we can help them all because 

   WE>i