Introduction
September in Goa is usually the month when the rains die down and the sun comes out, perhaps with only a few isolated pockets of showers during the night or the odd day of rain. However this year many (including ourselves) have been caught out by the weather during the last two weeks. The rains started again probably two weeks ago with the odd sharp shower, and then became more regular and we are now up to the point that it has been raining solidly for the past 24 hours. Many locals had started to clean up their buildings by scraping of the green algae that coats many of the walls throughout the monsoon, also if people have never been to Goa between June and October they may not realise how green the place becomes, with patches of small grass being turned into 6ft jungles within a matter of months.

The ‘Mango House’ is now nearly finished, and we are hoping that we will be open in early October. Robert and Shermina have been working hard, day and night to try and get it finished.

Shermina and Rob moved into the house so they can start earlier and finish later, but it’s been hard especially as they have been on their own for most of the last month.

We hope you enjoy this instalment of the newsletter and if you have any queries or comments then please contact us at .

Website
There has been a number of changes to the website this month including two new sets of pictures of the children and a small set of pictures of the Ganesh Festival in Mapusa. Below is a list of the changes to the website : -

Changes to the website

www.childrenwalkingtall.com/
We have added a new link to our home page for anyone interested in purchasing Paint Balling Tickets. We have 10 books of tickets to be sold for £49.95 each. A book contains tickets for 8 people and can be used at a number of centres across the UK. The only extra cost is for the price of paint balls (ammunition) which costs £10 per person. For anyone who is interested in these tickets, please check out (www.childrenwalkingtall.com/Paintball.htm) on the website for more details, and if you would like to purchase a book please contact our UK office.

www.childrenwalkingtall.com/Pictures6.htm
During this month we have started to help another project within Goa. It is a local project that has been opened by one of the families from a local slum. It provides food, accommodation and schooling for up to 20 children. The project is short on funds and equipment so we hope to provide help and assistance to this newly started project where ever possible to encourage self help within the slums.

On our first visit we took each child a bag that consisted of two sets of clothes, underwear, toys and a tooth brush. We also gave the project items like colouring books, pencils, school books and posters etc to help with the lessons. The photographs are of the children receiving the presents.

www.childrenwalkingtall.com/Pictures7.htm
These photographs are from a trip that we took to both of the slums at the beginning of September. It was Anna, our volunteers, last day with us so we took lots of fruit and sweets. At Sinquerium the children sat colouring and playing.

www.childrenwalkingtall.com/NeedsList.htm
We have added a few items to the needslist and updated the items that have been either reserved or purchased this month. We would like to thank everyone who has helped purchase any of the items and we are glad that the Needslist is one of the most viewed pages.

www.childrenwalkingtall.com/OtherPictures.htm
Another small set of new pictures (look at the bottom of the webpage) ‘Part 6 - Ganesh Nights in Mapusa Market, the market was taken over by strange music and people crowding round the puppets of the 'Elephant Man'’, these were taken in the middle of the month during the Ganesh Festivities.

www.childrenwalkingtall.com/Volunteer-Experiences.htm
The volunteer section of the website has been updated again, we have added a comment from our most recent volunteer (Anna) and also updated the look of the pages. Please take a look at our new ‘Experiences’ page for the volunteers comments.

This months stats from our website :

The ‘Top 5’ most visited pages this month are :-

1. www.childrenwalkingtall.com – The Home Page
2. www.childrenwalkingtall.com/NeedsList.htm - The Needslist
3. www.childrenwalkingtall.com/Pictures.htm - The Pictures Home Page
4. www.childrenwalkingtall.com/Volunteering.htm - Where you can read about how to volunteer for us.
5. www.childrenwalkingtall.com/Newsletters.htm -The Newsletters Home Page

Fundraising

*How to Help* with fundraising
1. Please spread the word about Children Walking Tall. A simple way is to forward this newsletter to your friends and family asking them if they could find the time to read it and to visit our website.
2. If you work at a company that might sponsor any of our projects, please get in touch with us.
3. Be a member of our UK fundraising team by distributing leaflets or raising money. A good way is by finding something that you enjoy doing and have a fundraising event.
4. Have a look at the fundraising pack for ideas about how you can help.

Thank you to everyone!
If we haven’t thanked you then please let us know! Our supporters are the ones who really do the magic, without the support of everyone then none of what CWT does would be possible. If we haven’t mentioned your name this month and you think we’ve forgotten you then please accept our apologies, we are so grateful to everyone for all they do, the best thing to do is to send us an email and say ‘Hey! Can you put my name in the newsletter for …….’. Either that or just have a look at the smiles on the faces of the children in our photos, you’ll see they think the world of you! Thanks

Leaflets
Thank you to everyone that has offered to distribute our leaflets and spread the word about our charity. Special thanks go to Steve, Lynn and Steve and a volunteer centre in Torridge. As well as support from England we are getting a great response from businesses over here in Goa. We would like to thank all of them for their support, these include, Café Lazy Days, Steaks, Chillies, All Spice, Indian Spice, ENEM Travel.

Bean Bags
A very big thank you to the Year 5 class at St. Peter's Primary School, South Croydon. The children collected money in a penny jar and donated it to be used to make bean bags for the children to sit on. I am sure that the children will love to lounge around on the bags and hopefully we will get some photographs to send you soon.

Monthly Donations
Thank you to Kathleen who has set up a monthly donation to be used for fruit runs and also the sponsorship of a child’s education. Without these guarantees of money coming into the charity we would not be able to plan ahead. Thanks!!!

Online Donations
Thank you to Lorna, Kathleen, Laara and Karenne for their kind support through online donations through the Givenow website ( http://www.cafonline.org/apps/Charities/CharityProfileLink.aspx?MainId=658399&SubId=638145&Source=CAF ).

Water Tanks
Thank you to Ian who stumbled across our website whilst on the internet one day and decided to donate the money to buy the two large water tanks. We are now just waiting for the water tanks to be fitted and then hopefully we will have a continuous supply of water throughout the year.

Hand Made Cards
Kathleen has been very kind and has spent a lot of time making cards for us to sell. There is an assortment of cards for Christmas and other occasions and I am glad to report that over half of them were sold in the first week of us receiving them. Thanks!

Fans
Thanks to Lynn and Steve for donating the money for three more fans for the ‘Mango House’. The house is kept lovely and cool due to all the fans so Thank you!

Donations
Thank you to Melanie, Dena and the various other people that would like to remain anonymous for donating money towards our general project. Without people doing this the project would not be able to accomplish anything, the money will go on day to day things like rent, food etc. Thanks for all your support.

Busy Bee’s Nursery – Qatar
Thank you to Nadeen and the Busy Bee’s Nursery in Qatar for donating money towards our project. It is great to know that people from around the world are hearing about us and offering their support.

Excess Luggage
Thank you to everyone that has been in touch with our UK office to enquire about bringing over excess luggage. Denise who manages our UK office, is constantly battling with the various airline companies to convince them to allow us excess luggage. It is unfortunately becoming more difficult as the airlines compete and the ever increasing price of fuel. If you require excess luggage then please contact the office as soon as possible giving Densie at least a month to apply on your behalf. Thank you to Denise for all her hard work.

Signed Photograph of Daniel Bedingfield
We have managed to get hold of a signed photograph of Daniel Bedingfield that we will hopefully auction later on in the year. Thanks go out to his manager for sending us this gift.

Paintball Tickets
Delta Force World Class Paintball Entertainment have donated 10 books of Paintball tickets to the charity to be sold or used for raffle prizes. Each book contains 8 tickets and cost £49.95. For more information please visit our website http://www.childrenwalkingtall.com/Paintball.htm or contact our UK office.

What's Been Happening?

Animals Galore
During the last month the Mango House has had a number of unwanted guests. It all started off one morning as Robert walked to the back door and stumbled across (but not literally) a large 8ft long greyish snake. Thankfully the snake seemed less inquisitive in Rob than Rob did about it and it slid off into the undergrowth. A couple of locals suggested that it might have been a Cobra, but we are not sure.

On the same day, Shermina saw one of the snakes’ natural enemies, a Mongoose, in the front garden which will hopefully keep the snake at bay but won’t help with two of the other creatures that we found in the toy room. The first was a 3 inch tarantula, the second a small black scorpion. Luckily for us, but not for them, the house was treated with pesticides during May and any insects that enter the house do not live for long. However we still seem to get plenty of mosquitoes every day due to it being the monsoon, but we are combating this by putting up home made mosquito nets at all the windows.

The Mango House

Unfortunately the ‘Mango House’ is still not complete due to problems with the builders and the ever lasting rains in Goa. We are still hoping to open at the beginning of October but as with everything plans change daily. Just to give you a sneak preview of some of the work that has been completed during the past few months here are pictures of the bathroom before it was renovated (small picture) and now that it is just about finished (large Picture). The new bathroom was created out of a small room that used to be the bathroom and an outside porch at the back of the property. It is now twice as big as the original bathroom.

The old bathroom had impressive features like a bucket water system for the toilet, with manual pour option that required using the property’s only tap in the kitchen to fill the bucket, and a tap less sink. The new one has four separate cubicles containing a shower and toilet (see picture below), and has a common area that contains 5 sinks. All the cubicles have doors that will allow the children to bathe in privacy. The bathroom has been fully tiled and painted, with a blue and silver scheme, to ensure that it can be kept as clean as possible. To save money and keep as many original items as possible, the old internal bathroom door is now being used as the external door to the bathroom which leads out to the back garden. The original gates to the porch are now being used as grills for the windows. Apart from the jobs such as plumbing and tiling that the builders did, Rob and Shermina finished the room by scraping the walls, painting, cleaning and adding the finishing touches.

Slum School
The school in the slum still has not been able to take place during this month due to the rains. However whenever possible we have taken colouring books and crayons down to keep the children entertained for a while. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks the rains will have subsided enough to restart the school.

Goodbye to Anna
Anna, volunteered for the charity for 6 weeks and unfortunately her time came to an end at the beginning of this month. She enjoyed spending time with the children at the slums but also helped with the painting and cleaning of the ‘Mango House’. During her last few days, she ran a few lessons at the new school project that we are supporting.

Unfortunately her trip home started badly as the train up to Mumbai was delayed by 7 hours and then the journey took 5 hours longer than it should have due to a train crash earlier in the line. Shermina and Rob accompanied Anna to Mumbai to make sure that she arrived safely. Thank you Anna for all the work you did for us and we hope to see you again.

New School Project
At the beginning of the month we were asked to give help and advice to another small project in Goa. The project has been set up by one of the families from a local slum. The project is helping 20 children from the slum by housing them, giving them food, clothing and basic education. However the project does not have any funds to continue their work. Children Walking Tall have donated items such as clothes, toys, educational materials, medicine and vitamins for the children and are supporting the staff on a weekly basis.

On our first visit to the project, the children greeted us large smiles and everyone wanted to shake hands. After discussing their needs, Rob and Shermina returned later that day with care packages for the children and materials for the staff. Each child was given a bag of items including clothes, underwear, two toys and a tooth brush. Sweets and fruit were also given out. Many of the children did not know what to do with the items and sat with the closed bags on their knees. After some encouragement all the bags were opened and the children’s faces lit up with smiles.

Future Projects

Indian Night in Barnstaple
Maureen is having another one of her famous Indian nights on October 8th. If anyone in the Devon area would like to attend or possibly supply items to be sold for charity or perhaps provide refreshments (with an Indian theme) for the night then please contact her on 01271 342067 (Home) or 07779 764156 (Mobile). Tickets are 8 pounds and are available now!!!!!

Toy Sale in Dartmouth
Val is starting to collect items for a Toy Sale which will be held in Dartmouth sometime in October, if you have any old toys that you wish to donate and are in the Dartmoor area then please contact Val on (01803) 835511 or drop them off at the Restored Shop, 19 Newcomen Road, Dartmouth.

Christmas
It’s only four months until Christmas!!! We’re not sure if decorations and cards have hit the shops in the UK yet, thankfully in Goa its only two or three weeks before Christmas that everything is for sale. We are in the process of collecting together small presents that we can distribute to as many children as possible on Christmas Day. Last year it was a great success and over 150 presents and pieces of fruit were given out. This year we hope to double this figure.

Auction Items
We have been lucky enough to receive several items that we are going to Auction off to raise money for CWT. Below is a description of the items we have so far. If you’re interested in any of the items then please contact us with your bid.

Signed photograph of Arsenal Football Team 2004 – 2005. We have all the official letters to confirm that it is an original picture.	Kylie Minogue Records. Kylie’s production company have donated a number of records for us to Auction. They are all originals and may are limited editions.

We also have a Signed Photograph of Daniel Bedingfield.

What you can do to HELP!!!
Perhaps you could make a difference in the lives of the children. Make a donation to Children Walking Tall. If you have a preference on how the money should be spent then please tell us, and we will try and make the money work the way you want it to.

Other ways to help are to donate clothes, books, pens and toys. This can be especially helpful if you’re planning a trip to Goa and can bring them with you. The easiest thing that you can do is tell others about what we do. The more people who know, the greater the chance we have of supporting children like these. Do you have any comments about the newsletter? Would you prefer a shorter version? Would you like to see pictures in the newsletter (Email will be larger if pictures are added)? Please let us know what you would like, as we always want to improve what we do.

And Finally
If you would like to receive these monthly newsletters by email please contact us at . Please put the subject “Join Newsletter” so that we can add your address to the mailing list. Send us the email address you wish the newsletter to go to. If you have received this email by mistake, or wish to cancel your monthly newsletter then please let us know by email at with the subject “Cancel Newsletter” Many Thanks from everyone at Children Walking Tall.