By Jennifer Mapakou | Operations Manager and Director
Dear friends and supporters,
We are writing to give you more updates of what we have been doing with your financial support over the last 3 months, in helping children with special needs to learn and connect .We would like to thank you first and take this opportunity to give you updates of our charitable work, in helping children with special needs to learn and connect. Thank you all for your financial support and prayers during this difficult time of Covid-19. It has been a very challenging time for many organisations but with your financial contributions and prayers, we continue to support our members as much as we can.
Destiny Children and Family support project continues to offer Virtual weekly tutoring and creative social activities to children with special needs and monthly family support forums for parent and carers. The adults session is a peer support forum for adults carers (parents and carers and siblings of children with special needs and disabilities ) which continues to run once a month on the 1st Monday of each month from 11am -1pm . Our adult carers have been affected by the pandemic, feel anxious and unsupported due to the lockdown. The forum is helping to combat isolation, empower families with information and knowledge and bring people together using zoom platform and what's app group. The forum is led by parents and is giving the platform to all carers including young carers to share their ideas, tips, experiences and discuss common issues as carers. We invite professional guest speakers every month to share valuable information on how to deal with challenging issues and empower parents and carers to strives in life
As you all know, COVID-19 still around and to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our members, the project has been adapted virtually online on zoom instead of face to face group meeting.
This winter, we have had 3 monthly parents /carer support forums , 12 weekly Tutorial classes and creative virtual social activities for children and young people on Zoom as of today.
Each month, we had different professional guest speakers at each forum with different topic to discuss and share relevant information to empower our families on Health, education and wellbeing. Our recent topic was "Coping with Isolation and Health Issue related to Covid-19". It was an engaging forum were our members was asking questions and shared ideas to support each others during the session. The forums we had so far are empowering parents carers with knowledge and is building strong connection where parents are connecting with each other's and support one another.
Our Tutorial classes and creative virtual social activities has been running every week on Wednesdays from 5pm to 7pm since October. We have been running it in 2 separate age group of 5-11 years from 5-6pm and 11 -16 years from 6-7pm however we find the majority of young carers prefer to stay for the whole 2 hours session. The session is mixture of sensory fun activities , creative arts and crafts, social stories, reading and creative, fun activities, cooking and educational games. In December we had lots of creative Christmas Theme Decorations and our young carers were so involves and happy to showcase their arts work at the end of each session feeling proud for their creative work. Families are so happy that this project is providing creative activities to engage their children and they are so happy that we are delivering free material for the session for free of charge. The project is helping young carers to connect and engage with others and at the same time boosting their skills and confidence. Children are looking forward to each week and also making friends as they take time to interact with each others during the session
As a charitable organisation, we will continue to support our members by sharing valuable information for health and well-being via our Destiny children and Family Support group on WhatsApp and Zoom Club . We also continue with the provision of food donation via fare share food distribution to our members once a week by delivering free parcel food to our members' home as needed.
Looking ahead we will continue to support our member remotely via WhatsApp group , Zoom Virtual Club and telephone support as well as providing free food distribution to our members as we can to support them during Covid-19.
We will continue with our weekly Virtual tutorial classes and creative social activities for young carers and SEN children, Virtual monthly Peer Support forums for adult carers, Telephone support line and some occasional family outings. Children and young people will continue to engaged in arts, crafts and educational games, reading story books, maths and creative social activities where children and young people are supported to engage in learning and create useful small objects in arts, and use their imagination to be creative on zoom. They will be able to socialise and form friendships virtually on zoom. See our website for more information www.lwfci.org.uk
The children will continue to receive vital support to boost their learning virtually and social skills through this project and this will assist them in experiencing a brighter future. It is so wonderful to know that, some of the materials and support costs were been paid for from the contributions that you have all made to this project. Our work is only possible through the kind donations and support from our incredible donors like you.
We are hoping to restart the provision of our face to face social activities , educational trips and outings at the beginning April 2021 but will depend on the Government guidlines on Covid-19 and on your valuable contributions, as the project is not yet fully funded.
Our work rely on grant funding, your donations and crowd fundraising from GlobalGiving and we do hope that you will continue to support us again. Please continue to support us as we need your help than ever. Please donate and share our project page with your network by Click here to Support Children with Autism to Learn and Connect .
Your donations are the key in conducting such educational activities and offering support to our children and families.
If you have any questions or would like to engage with this project in some way, please feel free to email us at info@lwfci.org.uk and we will get in touch with you.
From all of us at Lay Witnesses For Christ International -UK. A very BIG thank you!
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