 |
|
|||
|
|
Secretary's Tour - April - May 2008 The secretary was the latest Beit officer to visit the three beneficial accompanied by his wife together with the Trust's local representative and his wife. The purpose of the tour was to monitor the progress of projects that The Trust had grant aided in the past and to visit other institutions that had requested future aid. He focussed primarily on education throughout the three countries.  The tour started in Zambia, where the party took the opportunity of visiting the BeitCURE Hospital, in Lusaka, built by the Trust as one of its centenary projects. The hospital continues to go from strength to strength, with the director and his staff having been highly proactive in growing the skills base, setting up medical training schemes, and broadening the reach of the hospital to the poor and crippled of Zambia’s children. Already the hospital is the national leader in treatment of hydrocephalus and clubfoot, and it aims to contribute to the pan-southern African initiative for COSECA professional qualifications. There is also an outreach programme whereby small teams of CURE medics tour Zambia to run follow-up clinics and identify crippled children.
After further visits within the country and returning to attend the bi-annual Correspondents' meeting in Harare, the party then flew to Lilongwe, capital of Malawi, a long narrow country bordering Lake Nyasa. Here a hire car took the group almost 300 miles upcountry before returning to Lilongwe. Whilst in the Central Region of the country a visit was made to the excellent Nkhamenya Girls' Secondary School. Established in 1952 and now run by the Roman Catholic Rosarian sisters, the Trust has given a number of grants over the years, including a Book Pack, the latest being a grant for the construction of a new hostel (right), which should, when completed, prove to be a boon to the over-crowded school. Finally, after visits to the numerous schools, hospitals and other past, present and future grant recipients in all three countries, the Secretary and his wife flew to South Africa first to meet Beit Trust funded scholars at Rhodes University and the University of Cape Town and then to visit Biblionef in Cape Town. This organisation has recently taken over the mantle of assembling the annual Book Packs given to school libraries in the three beneficial countries. They were shown by Mrs Jean Williams (Right of left picture) the latest consignment totalling over 10,000 shortly to be sent to 12 schools in Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
2008/09 Beit Scholars The names of the next generation of Beit Scholars selected to attend universities in the UK or South Africa are now listed on the Beit Scholars' Forum.
|
|||
After visiting a
number of schools and community projects in the Central Province, the
party drove north to the Copperbelt. Here several large NGOs have helped
the Copperbelt Health Education Project (CHEP), which for
20 years has done good work to coordinate action to
prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. AIDS infection rates have dropped from 20% to 16% but the
new challenge is to keep that figure declining as ARVs have meant diseased
people feeling much better and returning to their old ways, with a
resultant spread of infection. In 2006, the Trust funded the building of
7 suites (right) to be used for visiting AIDS groups.
Crossing
the Zambezi River by the Otto Beit Bridge, built by the Trust over 70
years ago, the party drove into troubled Zimbabwe. South of the
capital, Harare, a number of sites were visited, including Gokomere
High School (left). Originally established in 1951 by the adjacent
Dominican mission, the co-education school now houses almost 1,300
pupils, and, despite its appearance, is still one of the country's top
grant-aided secondary schools. Although the Trust made a sizeable grant
in 2007, the Form 1 girls' hostel, destroyed by fire in 2006, has yet to
be rebuilt, due to the almost total lack of building materials in the
country. 
