Projects

We're giving this a whirl!

Girls and women are met with challenges with their monthly cycle. The cost of manufactured feminine hygiene products is prohibitive and the garbage generated can not go into the tanks of our town toilets. Usually most resort to using rags.

We have been considering piloting the use of reusable sanitary pads for some time now and we are grateful that the perfect opportunity presented itself.

We are so lucky that there are many people who like to donate goods for us to ship! 

Yes, it is a lot of work, but goodness, just look in any distribution album to see the happy faces of the recipients!   

Actually, you may notice that some seem rather straight-faced, right?  Well, that is due to being entirely overwhelmed and also, culturally-speaking, it is considered rude to smile for such a serious event.  It takes some prompting to get most to smile!   

It was time for a whole revamp of the water situation at school and we are so very pleased that we were able to do this!

We can't run a water distribution pipe to the school from one of our boreholes, because the school would never be able to generate enough money to pay for the meters and upkeep of the system, so, we have done our best to work within the constraints. 

We started, years ago, by building water reservoirs to collect the rain that landed on the roofs of the school buildings--the cleanest water the students had ever had.

Torrential rains and clay-like dirt have created drainage challenges at Dekpor Basic School since we have been on the scene.

The resulting erosion would eventually damage buildings, so we have tackled this massive undertaking!

There is now a trench that has been dug around the exterior perimeter of the compound, most of which is marked by the backs of the classrooms. There has been substantial grading done to help direct runoff in the right direction. Gutters constructed.

We have 5 town toilet facilities and also toilets at the school campus.  They require daily maintenance, but also, every couple of years, they must be pumped out.

Mid-June, Abraham and Linda received the terrible news that a family experienced a devastating fire. Basically, their mud hut and all their belongings--with the exception of one little cooking pot--were completely destroyed. Mom, Dad, and 4 children were left to tackle the rainy season with no shelter.

Immediately a Facebook campaign was started and within mere hours, so many lovely people jumped to the rescue!

Purchased:

For 4 weeks, our elementary school students are getting an opportunity that hasn't been available the last couple of years due to the pandemic ... it's vacation school time!

Now, granted, most kids around the world aren't thrilled with the idea of more school when they are supposed to be on holiday, but you have to look at the whole bigger picture.

An Austrian friend of ours who has actually visited the village to visit her sponsored student, Ulrike Sprosec, retired and asked that the monetary donations be directed to DSDO! What a beautiful gift! Ulrike requested that we help a woman with a business start-up.  We are so pleased that we were able to help two!

Raising chickens can provide a family with a constant source of income and protein.  We hired some of our recent grads to do the construction.  Two chicken coops were built.

Honest to gosh, this has been a long time coming and we are extremely thankful that we were finally in the position to install manufactured eaves troughs on the school campus!

Up until this point, we have had to make do with flimsy, handmade metal eaves that, unfortunately, required fixing after every single rainy season, i.e. twice a year.

The gift of a cell phone is, quite frankly, life-changing.

There is no high school in all of  Dekpor, so our high school students are stationed in different towns. Their teachers share course materials and assignments using WhatsApp, but, there is a big snag if one doesn't own a smartphone.   Sadly, there aren't just computer labs or loads of text books in the high schools.