On Saturday the 5th of May the Norwich Medics Rugby Football Club held their annual Chairman's Dinner where the club celebrate their achievements throughout the year and raise some money for a nominated charity. This year the club's chairman was Jay Thomson brother of Chloe, one of our trustees. We are thrilled to say that Jay chose to support Milele so Chloe, James, Amy and Rich went along to the ball to represent Milele and join in the fun. 

Norwich Medics RFC Ball

Rich, Amy, Dani, Jay, Chloe and James

The evening was fantastic with great food, drink and entertainment. The club had lots of brilliant achievements to celebrate; all of their teams had successes throughout the season and the club were able to hold their first ever old girls vs students match earlier that day, a real landmark in the club's history. 

Jay and his committee put so much effort into the evening and managed to collect loads of really great items for the raffle and auction including signed sport shirts, personal training sessions, vouchers for restaurants, experience days (kindly donated by ExperienceDays.co.uk) and lots more. My personal highlight was a particularly special auction item which was simply described as 'A very nice fleece from my Dad's work' which (as you can imagine) really captured the imagination of the bidders and brought in a tidy sum!

All of the hard work really paid off and the club managed to raise an amazing...

£1700 !

Milele is a very small charity and we rely on sponsorship and donations to continue doing what we do. This money will make such a massive difference and help us to continue to help the children on our programme achieve their dreams. 

To give you an idea of what can be achieved with this amount of money I've given a few examples...

98

Months of Primary Education

A child could attend an outstanding primary school for more than 8 years.

226

Mosquito Nets

226 life saving mosquito nets could be provided to families at risk of malaria.

365

Days of University Education

Supporting a young person to receive a whole year of university level education.

This donation is absolutely amazing for Milele and really kick starts our 10th anniversary fundraising activities.

Thank you!

Hi All,

We are very happy to say that tickets to our 10th anniversary ball are now available for sale on the brand new Milele website!

We have such an exciting evening planned and we would love to see you all there.

Thanks,

Rich

Buy tickets here!

Hi All, As we approach Milele's 10th anniversary we have been thinking about what Milele has achieved so far and how we define success.

The most obvious measure of success is academic achievement. When the children sponsored by Milele get top grades in a school or university that they would not have been able to attend without sponsorship then we know that Milele is making a big difference in that child's life.  We are endlessly proud of the children sponsored by Milele and they consistently surpass our initial expectations but Milele is not an academic scholarship. We do not consider aptitude for education when children are sponsored so it seems unrealistic that every child will be top of their class in every subject.

The Milele mission statement talks about 'facilitating choice' and perhaps this is more what we are really aiming for. Enabling children to have some level of control over their lives and the ability to make real choices about what they want to do. For so many children across the world their path in life can seem predetermined, reliving their parent's struggles and perpetuating the cycle of poverty.

Milele Mission Statement

For the children on the Milele programme, we hope that they are able to see beyond their immediate situation and imagine themselves having alternative lives. When they are able to do this we feel that they will be able to make an informed decision about their future and make active choices about what they want to do in life. It is perfectly possible that they make the decision to continue living in the family village and work in the family trade but the important point is that they had alternative options and they chose that life.

As Emmanuel Kai approaches the end of his university degree he is starting to think about what he wants to do in life. Having lived in Nairobi for the past few years he may have got a taste for big city life and choose to stay living in Nairobi, or perhaps he will want to go and explore other cities across the world or maybe he will want to move back towards his family and use the skills he has learnt at university on a project closer to home. The point is that whatever he chooses to do he has been able to make an active choice about his life.

I'm proud of all of our children and know that by being part of Milele they are all exposed to more options in life and that the choice of where they go will be in their hands!

Richard

Hi All, Back in 2008 Amy and I founded Milele as a way to help children from difficult backgrounds in Kenya to access high quality education. We were young, naive and optimistic; with the help of our family and friends we managed to scrape together the money we needed to get Milele started and began sponsoring the first 4 boys.

Over time, Milele has grown from our original group of 4 boys to 19 children and whilst our family and friends are still being just as amazing as ever, we have added a wonderful group of new sponsors and supporters who help us to keep Milele going.

We have also been incredibly fortunate to be able to employ Rieder as a full time sponsorship coordinator to manage sponsorship on a day to day basis, provide support to more vulnerable families and make sure we are always doing the best for our sponsored children.

Milele will officially be 10 years old in September 2018 and we would love to get together will all of the people who have helped us over the years to celebrate our collective achievements and raise some money for the exciting years ahead.

Milele 10 year ball invitations

We have sent out invites to all of our sponsors and supporters (so if you haven't received one please get in touch and we'll arrange for a replacement to be sent) and we would now like to extend the invitation out to anyone who is interested in finding out a little more about Milele and helping us raise some money for future children.

The event is being held at Dixie Pavilion in Market Bosworth on the 7th of July 2018, tickets are £60 each and can be bought directly from Amy or myself. We would love to have a room full of people so please consider bringing friends and family with you so we can celebrate together.

Thanks for your support!

Richard