Latest News
Posted on Mar 29, 2011
Last Updated Apr 07, 2011
Hello welcome to the Sanctuaryartists blog! Jolene here, blogging from Kenya on her first official post! Well, firstly thank you for visiting our site! Our workshop is now up and running just under 6 months now and its gone from strength to strength.
We now have 7 part time mothers working on the team, all mothers of disabled children, who have received life changing employment here at the Sanctuary. On the paper making side of the workshop we have been working with our professional pulp making machine the 'Hollander Beater' for a month now! Paper production has improved no end since, now production is much more efficient, and the paper product is of a super duper quality, while retaining the beautiful earthy textures from the local Kenyan vegetation we use. Today the ladies were making bananna leaf paper mixed with napier grass.. topped with lovely cerise pink flowers! We had a brand new mum start today, Esther Joke, mother of 8 year old Robert who has cerebral palsy, by the afternoon they were all singing praises together while they made paper, Esther just joined right in like she's been here all along. I don't always know the words but saviour the praise right in! Before this work, they were often isolated due to their circumstances and stigma of having a disabled child. Excited to be preparing to ship about 1500 new cards back to the UK!
The ACE (assistive cardboard equipment) side of the workshop is going great been but it has been on the back burner the last month in preparation for the big paper shipment to UK so next week we are back to cardboard for a month! Thanks to donations of cardboard from the local Nyeri Provential General Hospital, we work our skills with flour and water to create customised postural control seating and standing frames for disabled children. We are working our way through our waiting list but are managing to make two of these chairs each week that we work on ACE. We now have about 70 on the waiting list.
Cannot believe we will be back in the UK this time next week for the first time in 8 months, looking forward to working with Annabelle Hulbert and the team at home in merchandising the products.
Thanks for visiting the blog,
God Bless!
Love Jolene x