As most of you know, the Bill Cook Foundation provides access to education for thousands of children across the globe. Many of our students receive their main meals of the day at their school. Unfortunately, many of these schools were forced to close because of the pandemic.
The Bill Cook Foundations is responding. We are helping to feed families, including children, parents and grandparents. The food is primarily rice, cornmeal, cooking oil, and perhaps some fresh fruit. Courageous people, including some of the children, take the food from home to home where social distancing is impossible.
In Cameroon we support students with housing and school fees who have been displaced by civil war and now live in the two large cities, Douala and Yaounde. Now, we’re also feeding them. In Kampala, Uganda, we have placed 13 boys who lived on the street in boarding schools. Now we are actively searching for housing so that they do not go back to the streets.
We know nearly everyone is stretched thin these days. But if you can, please consider a donation to the Bill Cook Foundation to support these children and their families. We will continue to feed their bodies even if our schools can’t currently feed their minds. Thank you for your continued support.
Exercising the mind—and body—in Vietnam.
Be Tho is an orphanage in Bien Hoa, Vietnam, run by Sr. Maria Daniel Vu Thi Vinh. Thanks to your support, the Bill Cook Foundation pays school fees for about 50 of the children. The orphanage also has some older children with severe disabilities, in some cases caused by Agent Orange. These kids do not have activities designed for them, and the Sisters must take care of the little ones, prepare food and a hundred other tasks. I suggested that they hire a part time trainer to teach the boys exercises according to their abilities. The Sisters are enthusiastic, but of course a trained therapist will cost a few thousand dollars per year. I would like to find a sponsor for this ‘gift’ to the disabled children of Be Tho. This is a unique opportunity to bring direct relief to those still suffering from the aftermath of Agent Orange and the war in Vietnam.
Learning during a civil war.
Although we do not read much about it in our newspapers, there is a civil war in Cameroon. he Anglophone region—about 20% of the population of Cameroon— has an independence movement even while the Francophone rulers of the nation have continued to carry out acts of violence. And when that war is not flaring up, some in the Anglophone region attack recent Muslim refugees from a national disaster (About 35 years ago, about 1700 people were killed in a natural explosion). The nearby population, overwhelmingly Muslim, fled into an area of the Anglophone region near the city of Wum.
The Bill Cook Foundation funded solar panels for a school in a nearby village, but the school was shut down, citizens fled, and the solar panels have unsurprisingly disappeared. We are now supporting seven young men and women who are living in Douala, the largest city, and attending school in French. In Yaounde, the capital, there is a school containing 120 IDPs (internally displaced persons) that teaches younger children in their native English. I have visited both places and met many of the children and some of the teachers. They do good work in almost unimaginable situations. The total cost to support all of these children is $33,000 per year. We could really use sponsors for groups of 10 of the children at a cost of about $2,000 per year, and we will need commitments for several years. Please consider become a sponsor, and donating to the Bill Cook Foundation.