AGM

Our AGM will be on the 17th June at Kate's house in Tennyson at 6.30pm followed by a dinner hosted by Kate.

We are in the process of organising our next load of toys to go to Assam. We spent a Saturday afternoon recently sorting and packing toys. Some of the toy libraries in Adelaide donate the toys they discard. Many of them are still very good. Our toys have gone to Dhemai, and an orphanage and drop-in centre for street children in Guwahati. We hope to open more toy libraries later this year.

Some members of the Edwardstown Lions Club have been busy making very nice tops for the children using scraps of material. In addition we will be sending art materials, sports equipment (cricket equipment is very popular) and musical instruments and we will buy two pedal powered sewing machines for Dhemai. Rupali's mother has volunteered to hold sewing classes in the village.

Quiz Night Photos

Setting up

Quiz night fundraiser

We held the quiz night fundraiser on March 17th and with the help of some generous sponsors and 20+ tables of quizzers cleared $2100. All the money will go to supporting our efforts in Assam. Our only expenses were the hall hire, the cost of putting together the PowerPoint CD, a few prizes and balloons etc. Raelene made a beautiful quilt which was first prize in the raffle, Udoy and Rupali's neighbour made a decorated cake which was a table prize, we sold some weavings from Dhemai in the silent auction and Margaret Hess donated an auction item.

Our MC was John Kenneally from the ABC radio show the Bald Brothers who volunteered his time and effort both on the night and in putting together the questions. We are hoping to run a similar night in the Barossa Valley later in the year and John has volunteered again to do that.

Several members of the Edwardstown Lions club helped us set up for the evening and we were also helped out by several students from the Burnside Primary School who helped us in setting up and score keeping in the evening.

We'd like to thank our sponsors for the evening:
Oxfam
Charlesworth Nuts
The Cheesecake shop

SASCWA head office

Our head office is an outside table at Zuma's cafe in the Central Market. This is where we hold all our committee meetings usually over a cup of coffee or breakfast on a Saturday morning. Rupali told us this week that the village of Dhemai has acquired a communal mobile phone the only means of telecommunication from the village. She says the phone travels from hand to hand. She calls occasionally to check things are going well with the toy library. When she first called the people answering the phone found it very hard to believe that she was calling all the way from Australia. More recently they have become more confident and the last time she called they asked if we could send some more art supplies. We are hoping to send some paints, crayons etc soon after the quiz night which takes place this weekend. We have been very pleased with the response and the generosity of several donors. I will list them and include some quiz night photos on the next blog.

Fundraising

Although we have had a lot of in-kind support - see below - we do need some money to sustain the project. For example we pay two voluntary workers who catalogue, classify and shelve the toys and learning resources a monthly remuneration of $30 ($ 15 each) per month. The workers change each month. Also there are costs associated with moving the boxes from New Delhi to Dhemai. With the first shipment representatives from the local organisations travelled to Delhi to meet the shipment and take it back by train. In addition after discussions with local people we would like to fund some bednets for distribution and perhaps source some sewing machines and pay a local person to teach some of the women how to sew. At the moment local women make their own cloth on looms at the centre but it would be useful for them to be able to use this cloth to make clothes or items for sale.

All this costs money and we are holding a fundraiser - a quiz night - on the 17th March 2007 with John Kenneally, one of the Bald Brothers on ABC Radio as our MC.

Our supporters

Initially we raised $1200 through donations and fundraising initiatives to cover establishment and incidental costs but many of the other expenses for the project have been covered by direct support from organisations and individuals:

•Around 700 toys and learning resources were acquired through donations from toy libraries in South Australia, schools such as Burnside School and individuals and welfare organisations like Lions Club of Edwardstown.

•STA Travel Trust gave us a grant to cover travel expenses for Rupali to travel to Assam

• Udoy negotiated with Malaysian airlines and DHL Courier service to carry the freight free of cost from Adelaide to New Delhi.

•Two local organisations in Assam (SPADE and Omeo Kumar Das Institute of Social Change and Development) worked together in developing and implementing an early childhood development project at the grass root level

A Healthy Village

The Toy Library is functioning well and is proving a valuable resource for the school and for the children in Dhemai. At the request of the village, Rupali's parents, Bhuban and Meera Saikia donated a harmonium, a hand-pumped keyboard instrument (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonium) to the village. At the opening cermony of the toy library we noted that the children sang but there was no musical accompaniment so the harmonium will be a very welcome addition for village celebrations.

With the help of the the Edwardstown Rotary Club we were able to send T-shirts, baby blankets and caps in November. We are now investigating the most cost-effective way to provide bed nets for malaria prevention to people in the village.