Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord. Col 3:23

Hello and Happy New Year to everyone! Whilst we have been enjoying Christmas some of our partners have been busy drilling boreholes, feeding children and running literacy projects – all thanks to your generosity. I am always amazed at what we manage to achieve from a small base in Beverley.

The picture below is Ruby in Ghana with school children from Sanouri school in the North of Ghana. The Souter Trust has funded a project that will set up a farm to feed the children and also fund their food whilst the food is growing. The school population had fallen to 138 after the government had pulled their feeding program and we applied to the Souter Trust for a grant to cover the cost of setting up a farm with land that the community had given to the school. The teachers had already grown food in a garden at the school to try to improve the children’s nutrition and were keen to expand this with help. Since this intervention the number of children attending school has already risen to 225.

Last time I spoke about a lady called Agnes who is living in Uganda and tries to look after 700 orphans. She and her partners had asked us to build a dormitory for 120 teenagers, to help keep them away from drug addiction and hopefully reduce unwanted pregnancies. The dormitory is now complete and we have also build a toilet block for the orphans who will soon be moving into the dormitory. We are now trying to raise funds for the borehole so they do not need to drink the pond water. Below is the completed toilet block.

We also extended one of our dry season gardens in Ghana and the ladies are so pleased with their crops and so grateful for your generosity.

Above is a picture of bean plants and the ladies from the community saying Thank you!

Below is a photo of pepper plants and the ladies working hard to erect a fence. You can see just how dry the soil is and how hard the work would be, especially in temperatures above 30degrees. A fence is needed because goats roam freely in Ghana and eat absolutely everything.

Finally, it is with great sadness that I have to tell you that Alistair and I are stepping down from Jacob’s Well Appeal. This has been a very hard decision but unfortunately I have been diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis and have been started on immunosuppressant medications which means I can no longer visit Africa (malaria risk etc) and our growing family in Inverness need our support. We have found this last year quite challenging with so much travelling.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for the wonderful support that you have always given us and also for the hard work you have done for Jacob’s Well Appeal. We are so grateful to have had this opportunity to meet so many wonderful people and helped them through the generosity and effort of our partners, supporters and donors.  We pray that God continues to bless you and Jacob’s Well Appeal. We are so grateful that Jacob’s Well Appeal will continue its amazing work.

Let us hold unswerving to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful. Hebrews 10:23

Hi everyone! Each month the world situation seems to become more extreme and I am reminded of the starfish story (I am sure most of you know it – a man was asked why he is picking up one starfish at a time and throwing it back into the sea, when there were thousands on the beach. His reply was that ‘ it made a difference to that one’) and we are just trying to help ‘that one’ that Jesus puts before us. I pray that all of you reading this has a sense of peace in Jesus no matter what struggles you are going through.

From my blog and the newsletter you will all know that we are trying to help an orphanage and school in Zambia who were left desperate after the drought at the beginning of the year. Thankfully, due to your generous support, we have not only provided chickens but we have also dug a borehole and the school now has a dry season farm with fruit trees. Jacob’s Well Appeal is providing ongoing financial support to cover the costs of food until Christmas, when, God willing, this project should be self -sufficient. We are feeding 120 children  who are all orphans but 100 live with other families and 20 are living with carers. There are many children across Zambia and indeed Africa that need help – we are trying to make a difference to those that Jesus has put before us.

The children with their head teacher and volunteer cooks!

The school volunteers cook for the children every day.

It is also harvest time in Ghana, and despite the rains being very unpredictable this year the harvest is better than expected. Our trustee, Liz Lyle, has been in Ghana these last few weeks visiting most of our projects. She has met communities that are struggling but still grateful for the help that JWA has been able to offer. She has seen the toilet block that you provided, as well as visiting mango plantations, the prison and the boreholes, as well as communities requesting our help. The visit has not been without its challenges – the car got stuck in collapsing track due to rain when visiting one of the rural communities. It took 4 hours for the villagers to help get the car out and they were offered boiled water whilst they waited. They eventually got back to Wa in a thunderstorm!

The picture above is groundnut which has been harvested below.

Above is Liz and Ruby looking at the guinea corn crop. Below is the Bambura crop sadly damaged by drought.

It is heart breaking when the women have spent so much time and energy planting the crop – they would have been better just eating the seed we gave them!

Below are the happy women who have successfully harvested their crop – thank you for everyone who supports our seedbank projects!

We are also helping a partner in Uganda called Agnes, who amazingly tries to look after 700 orphans who are basically running wild, through their organisation ‘ Abundant Favour Christian Ministries International’. We have now almost completed the building of an orphanage to house the older children to try and prevent them getting involved in addiction and sexual exploitation. Chris Blackburn, our trustee who visited Uganda in May plans to re-visit later this year or early next year to see the progress of the work. The photos below show how near we are to completion:

We are continuing to send aid abroad, including a container of colostomy to Zambia and medical aid to Ukraine and Cameroon since my last blog. We also sent a mixed container to Spark2Action in Sierra Leone, who are building Hope Farm.  Once again I will end my blog thanking everyone for their generosity to this charity, which enables us to help so many individuals. We are a small charity but our overheads are low and so I believe that JWA is able to make the most of your donations and God is able to do so much more!

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. Isaiah 12:3

We are so fortunate in the UK – when we want water we can just turn a tap. We have so much rain that we complain about it!  After our recent trip to Zambia, Jacob’s Well Appeal was able to send money for a borehole so that our partner will be able to grow food to feed the orphans and disadvantaged children during the dry season, since the harvest for this year has been severely damaged by drought and the next harvest will not be until after Easter 2025. On Saturday, whilst it was raining heavily here, they were drilling for water in Zambia. Apparently they usually get water at around 50meters – the 1st borehole did not reach water at this depth, so they tried another site. When they did not reach water at 50meters they decided to drill deeper, at more expense, but unfortunately the borehole collapsed. At this point I was getting concerned – we had no water and it looked like we had effectively wasted the money. This was the first time whilst I have been at Jacob’s Well Appeal that a borehole I had been involved in had not been successful. It must be heart breaking for people who live in Africa that have saved up as a community to buy a borehole only for the drilling to be unsuccessful. I even wondered that perhaps God was not in this project, but Praise the Lord! we got water at the third attempt.  What a relief for everyone! We do have some additional costs but it would have been much more expensive to start again, and with the same risk that we might not get any water.

The children watch the drilling which started very early in the morning and it was dark by the time they finished!

They are now getting busy planting fruit trees and vegetables to grow. Once the trees are established they will hopefully be very fruitful, but it does take a lot of watering to keep them healthy until they are big enough to cope without regular water.

We are also starting work on building a dormitory for orphans in Uganda who are currently living on the streets and also a school for disabled children in Madagascar.  There is so much need in the world and we have limited resources which is why we work hard to identify suitable projects. We thank everyone who supports the work of Jacob’s Well Appeal – despite being a relatively small charity we are able to do so much because of your generosity. Please read the newsletter – we can email it to you – so that you know what we are up to.

With God, nothing is impossible. Luke 1:37

Alistair and I have recently returned from Zambia. Unfortunately the last rains were so poor that the country has had 50% of its crop fail, particularly the maize, which is their staple food.  We were visiting projects around Lusaka and the fields there were just full of dried dead maize. Our partners run a small clinic as well as a school for 205 disadvantaged children, of whom 20 were orphans that they care for. They provide breakfast and lunch during the week for the 205 children and all meals etc for the orphans. They had planted maize to help feed them, but unfortunately all the crop has failed this year. They are now struggling to look after the children in their care. They have some land that they can farm, but no water. Jacob’s Well Appeal is hoping to help them by drilling a borehole to provide water for planting further crops and also buying some chickens (and feed) so that they can have eggs to eat and hopefully sell. Each of these projects will cost around £5,000. They will also need financial help to feed the children whilst the crops are growing. If anyone wants to support our work in Zambia please send your donations to the office, marked Zambia.

The school rooms are very basic and the cooking happens outside!

We were able to buy some food whilst we were there (as well as taking some in our suitcases) so the children had a picnic when we visited them. The maize is ground to flour to make mealie meal, which is what the children are eating, with an egg and vegetables.

The orphanage is really just three mud huts – one of which collapsed recently so that the boys are now in what was the chicken hut – the picture below is inside the chicken hut with a pole helping to keep the roof up! Our partners have bought land locally and hope to rebuild the school and orphanage on the new land, but this is a long term plan. Currently the buildings are on community land which is slowly being repossessed.

It is very humbling to see how some people have to live with so little. It is also frustrating that we had almost nonstop rain after Christmas whilst others are in drought. The whole country of Zambia is facing a very difficult year. Apart from the water shortage affecting food supplies, they also rely heavily on hydroelectricity. Whilst we were there the electricity was cut for 8hours a day – the 1st week we had no electricity from 2pm to 10pm, the second week none from 6am to 2pm. This really causes businesses and homes to struggle and if they use a generator the costs of fuel are very high indeed. When we left we were told that the cuts were going to be extended to 15hours per day. Usually it rains heavy from November to March and there is very little rain the rest of the year. This means that they can not grow crops from rainfall water until next November, and will not harvest any of these crops until next year.

We also met with  Stoma Care Zambia whilst we were in Lusaka. This team of people are all volunteers and provide all the stoma care for Zambia. Their fieldworker Ben Lungu spends his week days visiting patients who have recently had a stoma to give them free bags (which they receive from an American Charity as well as Jacob’s Well Appeal) and advice. He works in the evenings to make a living for his family. Without these bags patients can not lead a normal life as they can not control the leaks and smells from their stoma without the purpose built bags.  In Zambia people struggle to find any bags, and if they do, they cost around $15 each. In one hospital we visited there were no bags available and so the staff had used a plastic glove instead. Most people need a new bag every 3 days (though some require 3 per day), and the basic minimum salary is $42 per month, the average wage being about $200. We also met several people who were struggling to cover the medical costs, including chemotherapy for bowel cancer in a 30 year old man. To help them with free bags which would have ended up in land fill in the UK is a real blessing. We are planning to send Stoma Care Zambia a container full of stoma supplies, which will hopefully last them some time.

Thanking you all for your support and prayers. Though this visit has left us with many challenges, it has also shown us how useful our work can be.

Give thanks in all circumstances 1Thessalonians 5:18

It’s hard to give thanks when you feel things are going so wrong – the world certainly is in a desperate state at the moment. We aren’t called to give thanks for everything, but in everything because Jesus is always here for us. And, despite all the terrible things that are going on at the moment, we can still work together to help those that God puts in our path.

Alistair and I hope to travel to Zambia soon, where our contact is struggling to feed an orphanage attached to a hospital. The usual rains (November to April) have not come and they approached us for help in December for grain to plant, hoping for rain in January. Unfortunately the rains have not come – Zambia is in drought partly due to the El Nino phenomenon which has been worsened by climate change – so the grain planted has been lost. The country has declared a national emergency over the drought and we will visit to assess how Jacob’s Well Appeal can help. Please pray that the rains do come and that we can help this hospital and orphanage in this dire situation.

We are still sending regular aid to Ukraine, although not at the level we were previously. This is partly due to increased difficulties in getting aid into Ukraine with items such as food etc becoming too expensive to send. We are still sending a lot of medical aid including colostomy, which is required after blast injuries. We have also sent a recent container to Congo Brazzaville.

In the last few months we have completed another reusable sanitary pad project and received very positive feedback from the regional educational administrator who reports that the retention of girls in schools once they start their period has improved from 50% to over 85% with this intervention. Each girl retained means a whole family has the prospect of an improved home situation. She will not only be better educated to educate her children and hopefully send them to school, but will be in a better position to get employment if need be. Research has proved many times that education is the key to breaking the cycle of poverty. As part of the reusable sanitary pad projects the girls also get sex education and advice about contraception which should also improve the outlook for their future families.

We have also built a toilet block for a school in Northern Ghana. The pupils, 78 boys and 87 girls as well as teachers were having to go to the toilet in the bush. They struggled to clean themselves and risked snake bites etc. Some would go home and not return. Retaining teachers was becoming a problem.

Pictures of the teachers ‘toilet’ with straw around it and the old (unusable) toilet below:

Pictures of the bush that the children have to use:

The new toilet block:

Thank you to everyone who supported this and any other of our projects. There are many desperate people in the world that unfortunately we are unable to help, but it is good that there are still many that we can. We thank God for the partners living in very poor parts of the world who enable us to reach these poor communities.

Let us Love One Another  1 John 4 verse 7

Happy New Year! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and I pray that we have peace in the New Year. There are so many conflicts around the world and so much suffering that we can often feel overwhelmed.  Here at Jacob’s Well Appeal we are trying to make a difference with each small action that we take. We are so very grateful for all the support and help we have from our many donors, volunteers and partners.

Due in part to the Ukraine conflict as well as political instability and climate change we are seeing more and more requests to help communities struggling to feed themselves. In Burkina Faso our partners in Bobo are facing another year with families of the school struggling to survive. We have already helped them extend their farming to help feed these families and we have sent further funds at the end of last year to help buy more seed. We have also received request for funds to buy seed in Zambia to help feed an orphanage due to the rising costs of food. We continue to support seedbanks and dry season farming projects in Northern Ghana. It is very hard to see that the poorest people always seem to be the first to suffer when disaster strikes. Even with the support we can give, the ladies have to work very hard in difficult conditions to grow food for their families.

Pictures of the crops produced – peanuts!                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

This year in Ghana the harvest has been better than last year, when it was very poor, and for that we are very grateful. Because of the less predictable weather farming has become much more difficult as people plant when the rains start presuming they will continue. If the rains stop and start then the crop is ruined. We are also trying different crops, guided by the local agricultural policies, to overcome some of the issues as well as varying the diet of the beneficiaries.

The work on repairing the Wa Municipal hospital operating theatres has been completed and has made a real difference to the facilities. Everyone is so very grateful for the help JWA was able to give.

Before the work was started:

After the work was completed:

Liz (our pharmaceutical trustee) and Helen (our physio volunteer) visiting the hospital with Ruby and Lina and the staff of the theatres.

We pray that we can continue our work this year helping those who are in need.

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God. Romans 8:28

Hello – we’re having a flying visit back to Beverley as we have a trustees meeting today. We are all saddened by the terrible earthquake in Morocco and we have launched an appeal today to raise funds to help those caught in this disaster. We have a contact that is currently in the area of the epicentre in a community in the Atlas mountains so we will be able to get aid directly to those in need. We pray that the emergency services can rescue those that are still alive quickly and reunite them with their families.

The Ukraine war continues and we have now sent 31 containers to the Ukraine and Moldova since the conflict began.

We have now nearly completed the work on the paediatric ward at the Hain clinic that I mentioned in my last report and it is looking very good! I feel this will be a real blessing to those who use it and will help the patients and their relatives greatly, as well as providing a much better work environment for the staff.

We are now starting work on the theatre repairs at Wa Municipal hospital. This will without doubt, save lives. Liz, our ‘pharmaceutical’ trustee is travelling to Ghana this month and will be monitoring the work that has been commenced.

We have had a letter from the Ghana Educational Service stating that the training in the making of the re-usable sanitary pads in the schools has made a great impact on the girls that attended. The retention in the school has now risen to 85% in these girls and they hope that it will also reduce the teenage pregnancy rate.

Thank you for all your support.

We will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever. Micah 4:5

Hello! I am just visiting Beverley from Inverness, where Alistair and I are spending majority of the year babysitting. We are still in regular touch with Jacobs’ Well Appeal, and the work continues!  We are continuing our support for Ukraine, sending predominantly medical aid including 6 ambulances as well as food, clothing and warm bedding to this war torn country. We have also sent a container of medical aid to Zimbabwe and one to Congo Brazzaville, and a curtain-sider to Moldova. We are (at this very moment!) packing a container for Burkina Faso. Half will go to Bobo with computers for the school and items for the well drilling equipment we have already sent, and half will go to Ouagadougou with medical equipment and aid for the hospital there, including a mortuary fridge.

We also have run several projects in Ghana – a literacy project involving bead making (thank you Doncaster and St Leger Inner Wheel) and have nearly finished a paediatric ward for a remote medical facility in Ghana.

During our last visit to Ghana we went to the Tanziri community, a remote community in Northern Ghana. These remote communities live a very hard life – water is a real challenge and they survive by farming the land and are very dependent on the weather and the harvest. We are working with the women from this community on  farming projects to vary their crop and make them more self sufficient. They requested that the charity consider supplying a grinding mill to help the women so that they did not have to do the hard work of grinding by hand. They were happy to build the hut that the mill would be sited in.

Tanziri Hut made for the grinding mill

Women of the Tanziri community with their new grinding mill which they will use to grind flour and also crack the shea butter nut they collect as an alternative income during the dry season. The women will form a community and pay a small amount towards the upkeep of the grinding mill.

We are always so very grateful for the support you give us to carry out the work for those who are so desperately poor or are in need of help. Thank you so much!

God is our refuge and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble. Psalm 46:1

Hi everyone. I hope you had a wonderful Easter break. We have been in Inverness babysitting our 3 grandchildren so that our daughter can finish her GP training – we will be spending a lot of time up there this year, working for Jacob’s Well Appeal remotely where possible.

The war in the Ukraine continues relentlessly and we have continued to send aid, mostly medical, in curtain-sider lorries and the total now has reached 27. Because the financial aid to this conflict has reduced, we will not be able to continue at the rate we have previously, but we will still send as much as we can.

We continue to work abroad with our partners and we have recently drilled a borehole in a place called Jocheribayiri in Northern Ghana. Alistair and I visited this community in November and they have been without a source of clean water for over 50 years. This is a photo of Alistair and I meeting the community in November.

The initial drilling was unsuccessful – the contractors usually drill 3 times for the price (£4,500) in places they feel they should get water. Fortunately the second attempt was successful and they have now a borehole with an abundant supply of water which has been tested by the Ghanaian water Company to confirm that the water is safe to drink. The community will now have to look after this well – a community team has been appointed to do this and the community will have to save some money to cover any future repairs. This is always challenging in these poor regions.

We have also completed a re-usable sanitary pad project at the request of the Wa Municipal Education Directorate. They had seen how successful our previous re-usable sanitary pad projects have been and asked if we could help reach the girls in several schools in the Wa area, Northern Ghana who they felt would benefit greatly from this help. Our partners worked in 4 schools (Charia Clisters of Schools, Gbegru Basic School, Kperisi Basic School and Wa Municipal Girls Model School) and they teach the girls how to make the re-usable pads and they also give sexual health and menstrual hygiene education. 433 girls were reached by this project and every girl that remains in school due to this training not only helps herself but also the family that she will eventually raise. Below are some photos taken at the various schools – the pupils say that they really enjoy the workshops as well as appreciating their value and its wonderful that they can rely on the sunny weather to work outside!

Thank you as always for all your support – we can only achieve so much because of your generosity.

Behold, I am doing a new thing Isaiah 43:19

Happy New Year!

I can’t believe that I haven’t done a blog since September. We were in Ghana in November and December was extremely busy on all fronts. Now we are in 2023 and the war in Ukraine is continuing and the cost of living crisis is affecting all of us. We have been blessed to be able to help the Ukraine people with many lorry loads of aid, mostly medical, and we are so grateful for the financial support we have received from you all to enable this to continue.

Alistair and I had a difficult trip to Ghana. We met many communities who were struggling because of the currency of Ghana falling sharply against the pound (we previously have got 5 cedis to a pound – it was nearly 17 cedis when we were there) and the cost of fuel had quadrupled. The harvest had been poor and families are facing the real threat of hunger in this coming year. We will continue to support them as much as possible through our seedbank and dry farming projects as well as literacy training.

Below is a photo of one of our beneficiaries weeding her dry season garden plot. This community was very pleased with the plot which they can grow food to eat and to sell. They had planted 5 bags of soya but had only harvested the same 5 bags because the rains were late and harvest so poor. We would expect them to harvest around 35 and then repay us the original 5 bags to keep the seedbank going.  We had to let them keep the soya and promised to help them again next year. Your donations will help restock the seedbank so that we can help these communities.

We visited the vaccine cold storage unit we built for the Wa region. This was a timely build, as it was finished as they received their first covid vaccines. They use it now to store all their childhood immunisations together with other vaccines such as covid. It means that the vaccines can be stored much more reliably and are therefore more likely to be effective.

We also visited some of our fruit tree plantations. Some very regrettably had been damaged by forest fires. Our partners have rescued the fencing from the affected sites and replanted usually in smaller groups in the hope that the trees will survive better. Some of the communities have worked hard to water and look after their plants. It is a hard job when the water can be some distance from the trees.

We met several communities who had very poor water supplies and we are hoping to help them get a borehole. One community had a borehole which was broken – they have now had that repaired so that they have clean water available for drinking. I would not like to drink the water that they are collecting below! When this water hole dries up they then will have 5Km to walk for water, which is a river nearby. They have no access to clean drinking water at all.

Jacob’s Well Appeal continues to try to help the poorest people in the world with your help. We are so grateful to be able to be part of this.