Provide solar lanterns to poor school children

Dear Friends,

This has been a difficult year. Our shipment of 2300 lanterns from our supplier was delayed for months. It finally was delivered to the Salvation Army warehouse in April. Since then, we have distributed approximately 800 solar lanterns. Of these, about 400 have gone to the homeless, primarily in the Baltimore/Washington area. That was the easy part. Much harder now because of the virus is sending the lanterns overseas. Nevertheless, we have succeeded in sending almost 300 lanterns to Senegal, in addition to the 1000 solar lanterns that were shipped directly from the manufacture to World Vision in Myanmar. That is almost 1300 lanterns that will make their way to school children. In remote villages.

But there is more. While we were waiting for our shipment from overseas, we managed to locate a few small stocks of solar lanterns that were already in warehouses here in the US. We purchased about 150 lanterns of assorted models. Of these, we managed to deliver 90 to a local charity in Sedhiou, in the the Casamance region of Senegal. And these actually arrived in Sedhiou last week after following a very torturous route. We have a contact in Glendale, MD, whose family runs a shop in Dakar. He ships a full-sized shipping container regularly from the US to his shop, which is run by his mother. He does not charge us, which makes this a good deal for us. But it is slow, adding another couple months to the process. We dropped off four cases of lanterns (48 lanterns per case) to him two weeks ago. Two cases will go to Sedhiou and two will be distributed by CorpsAfrica, whose director in Senegal is the uncle of our contact in Glendale. Family is everything.

Thank you for your continued support. Be assured, we make the most out of every donation you make.

Links:

• The opening video shows the distribution of solar lanterns.

Dear Friends,

Thanks to your generous donation we have been able to order 48 cases (2304 pcs) of solar lanterns from our supplier in China. We have just learned that these lanterns will ship on March 4. We expect that our shipping agent in Baltimore will have them in early April, and from there they will go to the Salvation Army warehouse for Washington, DC, which will store them for us at no cost.

Our plan is to distribute the lanterns to school children in poor or remote villages, and to their families, using a variety of methods that incur no additional cost to the organization. The first is travelers. We have a number of partners that travel to countries where there is a great need for these lanterns. One, for example, is the McClean Bible Church, whose members have carried our lanterns in their suitcases to Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda. We are looking forward to learning where they plan to go next. We also have arrangements with two shippers in the area who will ship two to four cases of lanterns at a time to Senegal and the Gambia also at no additional cost to us. In both these countries we have networks who will further distribute them in poor and remote villages. Additionally, we have recently made contact with two local philanthropists who have roots in Cameroon and Liberia respectively. Both have the capability of getting the lanterns to poor villages in their countries, again at no additonal cost to us. In these ways, we show our respect for your donations and squeeze every last penny of value out of every dollar donated.