Elaine Blagnaut (center) and Louise Piek with Hayward Sagembo, Tembari president, during their visit to The Center on Saturday.
Elaine hands over to Hayward a plastic bag with foodstuff upon their arrival at The Center on Saturday, while Louise looks on. A regular donor, Elaine dropped off 20 bags of rice and tinned fish to assist The Center in its daily feeding program for the 175 beneficiary children. (More pictures after story.)By ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ
A Friend of Tembari Children
REGULAR donor Elaine Blagnaut, an expatriate executive with Port Moresby-based RBP Trading, came to The Center on Saturday with a colleague in tow.
Our new friend and also new supporter is Louise Piek, a medical nurse with RBP Trading branch in Rabaul, East New Britain.
Louise happened to be in Port Moresby on a company errand and took the opportunity to meet the Tembari children after Elaine told her about them.
Our visitors, who came at a time when we were just starting to cook the children’s especial lunch, were quite impressed with our modest facilities that included a newly-set up office.
Thanks to a recent donation of book and magazine shelves, office desk and a computer set, our office now looks decent. It is something that we are proud to show off to people visiting The Center.
Of course, I took the opportunity of telling Elaine and Louise that we need a lot of things at The Center, which we feel would help enhance the day to day life of our children.
For instance, the children need new reading materials like picture books for our preschoolers and reading books for our school children.
Our preschoolers have already outgrown those that were donated last year. And they are looking for more, something new.
Now that we are about to have electricity, we are also thinking of acquiring a DVD player and a decent TV monitor so we could play kiddy educational program that would greatly help our children get exposed to new things.
DVD programming has been educating millions of children across the world -- from cities down to villages with access to electricity -- starting from learning about the alphabet and numbers, a familiar stuff on Sesame Street, to lots of nursery games played by the gang in Bananas in Pyjamas and Dora.
Kiddy programming and new books would keep the children busy while waiting for lunch to cook and after our preschoolers are done with their morning classes.
The duo agreed that such new activities for the kids would always be worthwhile. The said they would find ways to make them a reality for our children.
I know they’ll work on it.
When Elaine first came to The Center last year, we were just starting to stabilize things at The Center, including our monthly supplies of foodstuff needed to sustain our daily feeding program for our beneficiary children.
Those days, Tembari only had 78 children. Now we are looking after 175 children – 69 of them attending elementary and primary schools and about 100 preschoolers and some toddlers.
Anyway, the main reason Elaine came to The Center on Saturday was to drop off 20 bags of rice (10kg), cartons of tinned fish and sweet goodies for the children.
Elaine wanted to make sure that we have enough of this while she is away on a holiday overseas starting next month.
It is heartwarming to have somebody like Elaine being actively involved in promoting the welfare of Tembari Children.
And when people visit them with commitments to help in changing their lives for the better, I know we are on the right track.
Tembari children chat while waiting for their special lunch to cook on Saturday. They were served curry chicken wings with pumpkin cubes, onion soup, cordial drink and fresh milk.
This gives his best smile for a rare picture of his.
Tembari boy reads while waiting for lunch to be served.
A heap of off-cut timber for firewood. This was delivered by the joinery division of Hideaway Hotel.
Two Tembari girls fetching water.
Hayward distributes flavored milk to the children. The milk is a donation from SVS supermart.
Tembari kids carry cartons of tinned fish donation from RD Tuna.
Children collect foodstuff from Elaine’s car.
Preschoolers browsing picture books.
Children fall in line to wash hands before they are served onion soup.
Hands crowd a small basin of water.
Three pots – one for chicken stew and two for onion soup.
Onion soup being served.
Tembari kids receive their bowls of rice and chicken stew.
Children having lunch while seated on the blue mat.
Girl dispensing with cordial drinks.
Kids have their soup.
Toddler Raphael drinks his cordial.
Girl washes dirty cups. (All pictures by ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ, Port Moresby, PNG)For comments, email the blogger: alfredophernandez@thenational.com.pg
Jarahdz500@online.net.pg
tembarihdz@gmail.com
freddiephernandez@yahoo.com
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