Barvely Von Luttichou - Tennis Program Manager

The third trimester started 12 September, 2006 after a 2-week break from school and all the kids were excited to be back on court.

During the school holiday 6 of the MYO players participated in a Namibian Tennis Association tournament held in Swakopmund. One MYO player, Placido Gertze, advanced to the finals and took second place for 12 and under boy’s singles. Many of the supporters who attended the tournament noticed the talent of Placido Gertze -- this was the topic of the day! They all wanted to know where Placido was from and how he became such a talented player.

I have noticed great talent as well in other MYO players and have identified eight students to receive individual tennis lessons so they can continue to improve their game. Congratulations to the following children:

Grade 5

1. Placido Gertze
2. Timotheus Absolum
3. Mary Aribes
4. Frieda Stephanus
5. Wilfred Mpahleni
6. Frieda Mukufa

Grade 4

1. Warren Rooi
2. Paulina Shikongo

We also took the initiative to organize a tournament in Swakopmund for all our MYO kids to improve their match play and for them to interact with the other local players. The grade 4’s played in a Coastal mini-tennis tournament the end of July against the different schools in and around Swakopmund -- Hanganeni Primary School took second place.

It’s all about concentration

In addition, MYO sponsored a tournament for the Grade 5 MYO players to compete against the Swakopmund Tennis Academy players. This was very good experience for our kids as the competition was very tough. Joel Isak made MYO proud by winning a medal at this tournament.

Shannon Taylor – Academic Program Manager

After all the hard work the learners demonstrated during the second term of school, the students were rewarded with a camping trip to a farm outside of Swakopmund. Mrs. Uschi Farbach, a local businesswomen and supporter of MYO, invited the kids to join her and her family at their spectacular farm in the desert. Although the MYO kids have grown up in Swakopmund, most of them have never seen a place quite like this. The kids wasted no time exploring and playing and we had great fun playing desert tennis, telling campfire stories, making s'mores, hiking, having a braai, and camping under the desert sky.

A fantastic time was had by all! I can safely say that it will be an event the kids will remember for a long time.

After a short two week holiday, all the kids were excited to get back to work and finish out the school year.

This term our theme for the academic programs is arts, tradition, and legend. Many of the books we will be reading and activities we have planned center around this theme. In addition to the typical focus on Reading/English and mathematics, we will be including an arts program led by a volunteer from Australia -- Lisa Chee. Lisa will be doing a three week project with the kids and this inclusion will add nicely to our theme for the term. Another focus of this term will be preparing the Grade 5 students for final cluster exams at their schools and preparing them to take national exams the following year.

We have added a new tradition to the MYO program -- a yearly Grade 5 trip to Etosha National park. We will be taking twelve children the last week of September to the Namutoni Education Center where we will view amazing wildlife and learn about the natural history and environment of Namibia. As you can imagine, the kids are very excited. Keep your fingers crossed for elephants and lions!

News

Our Youth Sponsorship Program is off to a great start. In the first 6 weeks of the program we signed up 42 sponsors. Our goal is to reach 300 sponsors over the next 18 months. While we still have a long way to go we feel our target is achievable as long as we continue to get good support from our management team and committed volunteers. Youth Sponsorship is our flagship fundraising program and it is vital that we reach our target in order to maintain continuity in our programs for the long term.

Thanks very much to everyone who have sponsored one or more of our children. As always, you have our commitment to continue to apply your donations in the most efficient manner possible.

Global Support continues to grow. In order to achieve our long term goals it is important that we continue to solicit sponsors and supporters from around the world. We are in the process of adding regional coordinators in Germany and Holland and we hope to bring on a team in Canada in early 2006.

Lisa, Lincoln, and Rani from our Australian team are with us in Namibia as this newsletter is being published. They have traveled over at their own expense to deepen their understanding of our programs, spend time with the children, and get to know the people of Mondesa. I am confident that they will return to Australia with a renewed passion and commitment.

Coming Up

MYO Christmas Cards will be available on November 1, so please consider sending our cards to your family and friends this year. We will have at least 4 designs available via our website and will sell them in packages of 10. In the coming months we will slowly add retail items to our website as a means of generating additional revenue and to continue to build awareness around MYO programs.

MYO Website will undergo some light user interface enhancements as well as a few new features designed to keep our program information as current as possible --look for these changes over the next 60 days. In addition we hope that you make MYO the homepage on your browser so you can have a few minutes of our presence every day.

MYO Facilities – Our ultimate goal is to build our own facility. This will be our largest and most ambitious project, but will be necessary to accommodate our projected 275 youth members by the year 2012. Our current target is to begin construction in early 2007 and be ready to move into a new facility by 2008. We will be establishing a separate construction account early in 2006 and will be implementing a parallel fundraising campaign to fund this account. Our expected construction costs will be between $80K and $125K. We would greatly appreciate your help identifying potential individuals or corporate sponsors who may have an interest in supporting this project. As always, I can be reached at rob@mondesayouth.org if you have ideas to share regarding our construction fund.

Grade 3 reviews will begin on October 1. This is the 3rd school term and this is the time when we conduct evaluations to determine grade 3 children who will join us as full program members in grade 4. We will choose 12 children from each of the 5 primary schools in our area. We select children who demonstrate the most enthusiasm, have excellent listening skills, good grades and good attendance records at school, and who can follow direction. We will then work with the teachers and principals to choose the top 6 candidates from the list of 12 at each school. We then interview the parents or guardians of those 6 children and obtain their commitment to fully support our program. This gives us our 30 children for next years’ grade 4 classes. It is a very intensive process and takes a lot of time, but we ask a lot of our children and this allows us to make good decisions around who to accept in our program.

MYO Computer Lab will be assembled and ready for January’s classes and we will introduce computer curriculum to our grade 6 learners next year. Thanks to the generosity of Helen Tanaki, IT Manager of PeopleSoft Australia for donating the 10 computers, and to Lincoln Dekalb who is in Namibia to set up the computers and the classroom.