How do Sponsorships of Neema Babies work?
I am so glad you asked! I’ve been wanting to explain how sponsorships work at Neema House Arusha. After almost four years in operation we are still learning how to run this busy baby home and best serve the abandoned, orphaned and at risk babies God has put in our care in Africa. We are also very conscious of being good stewards and using your money wisely.
We have now cared for 106 babies since we opened the door to Neema four years ago! People frequently ask, how do you keep this going? By God’s Neema (Grace)! The only answer is God’s Amazing Grace. He touches the hearts of good people like you to help and we are extremely grateful. Neema is supported by individual sponsorships of babies, much like Compassion International.
Monthly sponsorships of the babies pay the monthly bills to care for the babies. You might be interested to know that Sarah Lockett, our incredible bookkeeper, who works free of charge I might add, has separate accounts so that sponsorship money does not go into building funds or tractor funds, or other funds but goes into the monthly operating expenses to care for the babies. That pays for formula, rent, nanny salaries, petrol, food, medical, utilities, lights, and water. That is Sarah, a nurse from Waco, Tx in the picture kissing the baby. The baby Sarah, who was named for her, has been adopted by a wonderful family who moved to Italy after her adoption.
Only our forty Tanzanian staff are paid from Neema sponsorships.
You can see our monthly expenses on the website www.neemavillage.org. We are also pretty excited that an outside audit which we requested will be finished in a few weeks.
We also want you to know that we are always looking for ways to save money. In an effort to cut down on buying so much expensive canned formula, our cooks buy, boil and process 30 liters of fresh cow’s milk every day! It takes a huge pan on the stove to process that much milk! Kelly found a recipe for baby formula using fresh cow’s milk.
So once the babies are 6 months old they are switched to the new recipe which we make in our kitchen at Neema. It takes a lot of milk plus lots of fresh fruits and vegetables to get our babies to look like the healthy little Neemaities you see when you visit Neema. With our nannies and volunteers giving lots of TLC, these babies go from the tiny little one Bec Azzopardie from Australia is feeding to healthy little girls like Sharon and Maria pictured below.
We spoke at a business class at ACU this week and we asked the students after the video what they noticed that was different from other pictures of orphanages in Africa they had seen in the past. They were quick to respond that our babies look healthy, clean, chubby and happy, like Sharon and Maria.
I have been asked why we feed the babies things like a fruit smoothie, (which they get every afternoon at 4pm), and which they will not get when they go back home to their village. My answer? They eat a very unhealthy diet out in the villages why would we want to feed them that? When we send our babies home they will go home with all their brain cells intact and be curious, energetic, healthy little children. How could we do less for them?
When we move to Neema Village we will have our own cows and chickens and grow our own vegetables. Our landscape and gardens manager, Julius, ( pictured to the left) has already planted banana trees, corn, squash and beans at Neema.
Without the $1,200 a month rent for the current baby home and the $600 a month rent for the volunteer house and with growing our own vegetables and milk and eggs we should be able to save money when we move to Neema Village.
So, now that you know how we spend your money, how do sponsorships work? Many people begin sponsoring Neema babies at $30 dollars per month. With babies you surely understand that $30 does not cover the cost of keeping these babies! At $30 a month it takes ten or more sponsors to completely pay the costs of keeping a baby at Neema.
We arrive at the sponsorship cost by taking the month’s operating costs divided by how many babies we have that month. Last year it averaged between $300 and $388 per month depending on medical costs for the babies that month. In January we had three preemies, like Loitapuaki, in Intensive Care. Four million shillings in hospital bills for one month can blow a hole in our budget! We have learned that sponsorships is an ever changing thing! Credit cards expire, sponsors drop out, new sponsors come in, new babies arrive and other babies get adopted each month. It changes every month!
We have never had all our babies fully sponsored, the most babies we have had fully sponsored for one month was eleven. Many of the babies have lived at Neema for two to three years and gone home without ever having had a single sponsor. Some babies are sponsored at $150, $100, or $50 per month. But most of our sponsorships are for $30 per month. We don’t mind that since it gives us a broad base of support so when one person drops out we don’t get too upset.
We debated long and hard over whether we should let one baby be over sponsored. Should we tell a new potential sponsor, No, that baby is already taken, chose another baby? Some potential sponsors have a connection such as “My son’s name is John so I want to sponsor John.” So we decided the babies who have more sponsorship money could help cover the cost of the babies who have no sponsors. Thank God we have three babies who are “over sponsored” today. They help us take care of the ones who have no sponsors. Beautiful Saruni, pictured above, is one of our new babies this year.
When you sponsor a specific baby and that baby is adopted or able to return home then we always hope you will continue sponsoring and chose another baby. There are two great Neema sponsors who are on their third baby! They get excited every time they get a new baby.
We do have people sponsoring an “undesignated baby.” That means they chose to “Sponsor the Neema babies” as a group So the picture on their fridge would be of a group of babies, not one specific baby.
To sponsor a baby, go to the web site www.neemvillage.org, click on “See Neema Babies” read their stories and choose one. Sometimes it is hard to choose one. Our granddaughter cried when she had to choose one baby because it made her sad to think of the ones she couldn’t choose.
Now to the problem of how we can get updates and pictures of your sponsored baby to you. Without an administrative staff, correspondence with sponsors has become a huge challenge for me. Thankfully Kim White, our daughter and a board member of Neema (pictured below), asked if she could take on that project. 
Kim plans to send sponsors updates on the babies quarterly by email. She has color coordinated lists of babies, birthdays and sponsors, to know when to send updates. She also has designed a link so with a click you will soon be able to go right to a photo album for your baby! It is pretty cool and in this age of instant messaging it is quite an advance for us. We hope you enjoy it.
So in a very large nutshell, (sorry for the extra long blog) that is how sponsoring a baby at Neema works. Very few things in life give you that warm feeling in your heart like caring for those who desperately need your help!
Isaiah 58:10 “If you make sure that the hungry and oppressed have all that they need, then your light will shine in the darkness, and even your bleakest moments will be bright as a clear day. The Eternal One will never leave you, He will lead you in the way that you should go. When you feel dried up and worthless, God will nourish you and give you strength. And you will grow like a garden lovingly tended, you will be like a spring whose water never runs out.” The Voice
Bless those of you already helping. May your light shine in the darkness.
Michael and Dorris
ing Hi! He was about two and half pounds when brought to Neema. His mom had died and he was not expected to live. But the latest news from Neema is that Imran now has a double chin. Praise God!
Newborn Carol Ann was abandoned in February. She is such a little sweetheart. We pray there will be a good family to step forward to adopt her. We work with Social Welfare on the adoptions and they generally give about six months for a member of the family to claim the baby. If no one comes forward then the baby is put up for adoption. Neema has now had 21 adoptions! Neither Social Welfare nor Neema accept money for adoptions. 
Saruni is a Masaai baby whose mom died at his birth. His father brought him into town to Neema. Many of these dads have no income and cannot afford expensive formula. There is also no electricity for refrigeration out in the villages and no clean water. We can help supply those things for the dad in his home and do quite often but if there is no one to care for the baby at home then we take them in at Neema. Saruni will go back home when he is stable, off the bottle and his dad has remarried. He is such a beautiful baby. 
was left abandoned. He was healthy and looked like he had been well cared for. We have no idea why someone who obviously loved him would then abandon him. If we can locate moms like baby Rusty’s mom and get them into the MAP program at Neema maybe we can offer them a better way. Stay tuned for more news about the MAP program (Mothers Against Poverty).
Osiligi also lost his mother in childbirth. That is such a common occurrence out in the Masai villages where there is little medical care. Osi is normally a very smiley baby but looks a bit worried here. We would love to tell him not to worry, that we are working constantly to be able to take care of him. 
Meet baby Ronald. This little guy was found abandoned by a river on the outskirts of Arusha. Someone walking by heard him and called the police, who then referred him to Neema. He was born around the 28th of March, and is currently just over 2.5 kg and in good health. He was named for a truly great man, Ronald Huddleston, a missionary doctor to Africa in the 1960s. I would love to sit down and tell you some fun stories about the good ‘ole days with Dr. Ron and his wife Maxine in Africa when the lions still walked the corridors of the hospital where he worked in Chimala. Maybe some day! But we were honored to be able to name this little guy for Dr. Ron. 
Emmanuel means “God With Us.” I love this little guy’s name and I love telling people that if God were not with us in this we would be lost. To not only provide for the 106 babies who have now been cared for by Neema but to also have 40 full time Tanzanian employees and their families who rely on us for their income is way far above our heads. Thank God it is not above His! 
Our landscape plans call for these beautiful bushes around the fence at Neema Village, our home for abandoned, orphaned and at risk babies in Africa. With almost 2,926 linear feet of fence around our ten acres that is a lot of Bougainvillea! You can honor your mother/second mom or remember her with a gift of flowers to Neema House Arusha. “Buy a $20 Bougie Bush” and help us cover the barbwire fence around the property with these beautiful flowers.
On a visit to Neema House Arusha, a surgeon and his wife from Dar es Salaam fell in love with this quiet, shy, little boy and Danny has now gone home to his forever family. 
So much of what our little Neemaites at Neema Baby Home do and say reminds me of our children when they were little.
One of the most exciting things to happen this trip was the water well and finally getting the pipes laid from the well down in the banana grove up to the top of the property and into the holding tanks so it can flow down into the new buildings.
“Really,” I said. Joycie with head down looking up through her eyelashes said “Nyoka kitanda.” 
So Babu Michael takes her hand and they walk down the hall to the back bedroom where she points under the bed in the corner. Michael gets on his knees and searches all around saying, “Ona, hakuna Nyoka, Joycie.”
in Southern Tanzania, came to tell Michael there was a snake under the bed, but this time there really was! Michael, then 20 years old, (Yes, that’s him at 20 to the right) flipped out the knife he carried strapped to his ankle, stepped on the cobra and sliced its head off. At which the Africans ran out of the room howling!
But alas for those of you worried about encountering wild animals when you come to visit Neema, the goats who walk each morning down the dirt road in front of our house is about all the animals you will see when you come to big city of Arusha.
One of the little ones is in the hospital in NICU and could use your prayers right now. His name is Imran, pictured below with Bekah. His mom died of AIDs and the doctor put him on the medicine for that which may have been too toxic for him.
The Neema Nine,our big three and four year olds, had had their baths early and were getting their school clothes on when I stepped outside our bedroom door at 6:30am. My first thought was “I hope The Little Einstein School will be ready for this!!”
They brought Frankie’s triplet sisters, Yacinta and Lucia, to Neema as well so the family has been getting reacquainted. Frankie’s family is Maasai and they are famous for their beautiful jewelry. I was curious to see if they slept in all that sparkling finery and surprise, yes, they do. They were sleeping on mats in the playroom when our little school squealers came running in and woke them up. Both grandmother and mother sat up, earrings dancing, with that “Where am I?” look as the naughty nine tumbled in and began jumping and yelling around their sleeping mats. With the weight of the jewelry Mama Frankie’s ears have fallen so she has taken a slip of skin from her head and wrapped it around her ear to hold it up! Can you see it?
I was asked recently what was one thing I had learned in all this grand experiment called Neema and after thinking a moment I replied, “I have learned that people are basically good, no matter what the daily news would have you believe, most people want to help when they know there is a need.” We are continually blown away by your love and support for this most precious ministry. 
comes to us tonight, he weighs 1.65 kilos, about 3 pounds. His name is Saruni and his mom died at his birth. Please pray with us that God will save this young life and that we will be a blessing to him.
Matt and Kelly Erdman, with their two daughters, Camille and Tabitha, traveled back to the states for their first furlough home since coming to Africa a year ago.
We also drilled a dry hole out at Franki’s Maasai village. Another big disappointment for the women of that village who walk 4 to 5 miles a day for water as well as a disappointment for the kind folks in Colorado Springs and Nacogdoches who gave the money for the Masaai water well. But we have not given up. God is still good and we hope to try again in the future.
The staff number has now reached forty at Neema and at the Christmas Party this year, all our staff received a great Christmas bonus of $100 accompanied with lots of dancing and trilling. We killed and cooked two goats to celebrate plus peeled a couple hundred potatoes for the party. 
ups and downs and the loss of one baby this year we know that God has been Faithful. We continue in the knowledge that this is all His work and we are but His helpers.
(One of my favorite pictures, Camille Erdman, with Rehema’s help feeding one of the Neema babies, left.)
