Greetings from Siw in Bolivia

A seasonal greeting from our valuable coordinator in Bolivia, living her life between a rock and a hard place (ie being the liason between the Bolivia Family and the Salvation Army):

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Dear Friends,

Now we are very close to Christmas so I want to send you warm greetings! I hope you will have a very nice Christmas with your family and friends!

This is the 14 th time I celebrate Christmas in Bolivia. Now it is summer here, and it is starting to get very hot and a bit rainy, since the rainseason has just started. The shops have started to sell Christmas decorations and people have decorated with Christmas lights in the center of the city. At the main street "Prado" you can see the manger on display.

Many schools have started their summer holiday and the rest only have a few days left. The schools start up again in February. The Salvacion Army day care centers close right before Christmas and stay closed all January. Many of the children in our children's homes also go home and spend their Christmas and holiday with relatives.

The parents are very grateful for the day care centers so they can feel safe for their children while they are at work. The children get lunch, help with their homework and recreation. We hope our children that have the opportunity to go to school, really do their best. Because it is very important to study if you want a better life.

Dear sponsor, your help and your efforts are very meaningful. Thank you very much for what you do for the children in Bolivia through your contributions!

I wish You a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year in 2009!

Siw

Photos from Bolivia

We promise them on our web page, so better make good on that promise! First, here is the link to the photos from our previous trip around Bolivia in 2006. All but two of our day care and educational centres and orphanages are featured there.

Secondly, here is the first of my 2.000 photos from this year's visit. Such a beautiful little girl, but fortunately she's still on her first set of teeth!

Click for a larger version. I love taking portraits of children (and elderly people), so there is bound to be a lot more coming.

Here's to New Beginnings

As you can read on our main site at TheBoliviaFamily.org, our organization has been around since 1981. That is when this handsome man, Baste Fanebust,


went to Bolivia to find his sponsor child, and finally found her after weeks of rummaging around in an unknown country. He ended up taking on the responsibility of 45 abandoned children in an equally abandoned orphanage in dire need of financial support. Over the years, the number increased steadily, and today we're up to 890 children in 17 day care and educational centres and 4 orphanages all over Bolivia. All but one are run in co-operation with the Salvation Army, with the Bolivia Family providing the financial support. As Baste used to say (he passed in 2005 leaving this organization to his sons, Øyvind and Frode): "The Salvation Army and me; we're one hell of a team..."

We've been on the web for at least ten years, but only in Norwegian. That is a language spoken by 0.08% of the world's population, understood by another 0.3% made up of Swedes and Danes, and complete goobledigook for the remaining 99.62%. It is a bit like publishing in sanskrit. So finally it occurred to us that perhaps it would be a good idea to put up an English site and blog as well...

Here is how we think this is going to work: A short presentation of and introduction to our organization is found on the web site. In this blog, we'll keep you informed on new and ongoing projects, show you some photos from our travels in Bolivia, tell you more about each orphanage and centre, etc. We'll also invite sponsors, co-travelers, volunteers and others to post.

We hope to make this an interesting place for you to visit. You are very welcome to comment here in the blog or to send us an email. And need I say that we are always looking for sponsors, large and small, for our children and projects..?

Best regards
Frode Fanebust