Craft Fair At Deafway - 19/2/12 10am - 4pm

 


























































































































































































































































































































Deafway is holding a craft fair and open day in aid of our 1000 friends for Maria 
appeal.
Maria is a young girl living in desperate poverty in Uganda. She is 6 years old and 
was born profoundly deaf. When she was less than 2 years old, her parents deserted her, leaving her widowed grandmother to look after her. Without specialist education, Maria will never learn to communicate, she will never make friends and she will have a very bleak, quite frightening, life to look forward to.
18 months ago, Deafway formed a partnership with a tiny, struggling school for deaf children in Maria’s area of Uganda (south of Kampala, near a place called Nkose). The school is called St. Anthony’s. This is potentially a wonderful school, but it has no money. Neither Maria’s grandmother nor the families of the other deaf children can afford school fees - there is no money available from the government. At the moment the children go out begging after lessons so that the school can afford to feed them.
Our aim is to be able to fund and support the school for an initial two year period - salaries and training for the teachers, food for the children (it’s a boarding school), support in how to set up and run a school properly. During the two years we can prove the difference the school can make to Maria’s life and the life of many other deaf children. That will make it easier for the school to get funding to continue afterwards.
We need to raise £60,000 - that will cover all of the costs for the school to educate 50 deaf children for two years. That’s just £12 per child per week to pay for all the teacher’s salaries, food, accommodation and educational materials.
So far we’ve raised/received pledges for around £40,000. We desperately need to raise the final £20,000 - and we need to do so by 31st March 2012 or we will have to give back £24,000 of the money which has already been pledged. 
To see a video of Maria please follow this link   http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.deafway.org.uk%2Findex.php%3Foption%3Dcom_content%26task%3Dview%26id%3D640%26Itemid%3D660&h=cAQGtyJfTAQFToYvdlooN8NjIJLROfTN-AGHEpNjMx3qDKQ