Thank you for volunteering at Neema!

Michael and I hope you had a blast while you were volunteering at Neema Village this year! I know we always do! Our babies and staff love volunteers who come to hold babies and help around the houses. They ask about you after you leave and we miss you!

May God Bless you for giving of your time and money to come and love some of the neediest children on the planet. One of you even bought an elephant for the children this year!

All of you brought gifts in your many suitcases and they probably felt like you had packed an elephant! This group, pictured below, brought 17 suitcases! Still cannot believe we got them all on top of the van!

We know that for each one of you that was a sacrifice and we want you to know that we know and we appreciate that so much. More importantly God knows of your gifts and the hearts of love that you brought with them. May God just richly bless you for that!

Aren’t our babies beautiful!  No matter how they come to us abandoned or preemie after just a few weeks with us they are fat and happy. But remember, they have all lost the most important thing to a baby, their mothers. Babies in Africa who lose their mothers, have only a one in ten chance of survival so we are thankful that we can increase the survival rate of these precious babies at Neema. (below a Safe Childbirth seminar taught by two awesome volunteers from Montana.)

We truly appreciate everything you have done for these babies and the strong hearted women of Africa. From teaching a women’s class, fund raising, changing a dirty diaper to just reading to your readers, we are so thankful for you.

We hope you had a good time. Most of our volunteers are sad to leave and many even ask, “Can we stay and live here!”  We wish you could but unfortunately the Tanzanian government prefers that we hire Tanzanians to do our work and does periodically ask NGOs to justify hiring non-Tanzanians. Thankfully due to God’s Grace we are still able to tell them we do not hire non Tanzanians!

We hope you have made it home safely and have some wonderful memories of your time in Africa. We would love to hear some of your best stories and see some of the pictures of your stay at Neema and who was your favorite baby! I tell people, yes, I have a favorite baby, it is the one I am holding at the moment! Osiligi and Nengai are two that I hold a lot!

Please continue to follow the Neema story on the Neema Village Facebook page as well as our personal Facebook pages, Michael Fortson or Dorris Fortson. Send me a friend request and I promise I will accept so you can get our monthly blog.

In case you didn’t know, we operate solely by private donations, we do not accept money from the Tanzanian government, Social Welfare, for adoptions nor from the US government and we must work constantly to find sponsors for our babies to keep the home running. We are not a “dirt floor” orphanage as you well know and must maintain certain standards for our babies.

We may look wealthy but we are not and we beg for every dollar.

Since the beginning of Neema, to best of my count, only twelve of our 120 babies have ever been fully sponsored. Just a few were over sponsored. Some of our babies lived at Neema for two years and were adopted or returned home without ever having had a single sponsor! God was gracious and took care of us anyway.

Sponsorships for Neema children start at $30 USD per month but it cost us approximately $300 USD per month to keep a baby at Neema. We take our monthly expenses: nannies salaries, food, formula, utilities, medical costs, petrol, etc. and divide that by the number of babies for that month. It fluctuates some each month depending on medical bills or car repairs but generally averages around $300 to $400 USD per month.

Only our Tanzanian Neema staff are paid a salary from Neema donations. All our “Wazungu” (directors) are either retired with their own income or they have raised their own support from their friends and family.  So please remember the babies and when “your ship comes in” remember that little baby home where you volunteered in Africa. We need your help!

(Volunteers Kim, Emily and Rachel above went to the hospital to pick up an abandoned baby.)

It is easy to set up a sponsorship on the website: www.neemavillage.org/how-to-help

Just click on the donate button and fill in the blanks. If you are not in the US please don’t fill in your address, it just confuses our poor donate program. If you have problems sitting that up, let me know, we can help

Also, if you are active in a church, please share your experiences with your pastor and let him/her know of our need. We love to go to churches and tell the Neema story. (Volunteers below on their way to church with the big kids.)

If you are already sponsoring a baby – Thank You! Thank You!

Once again thank you so much for coming our way and being part of the Neema Family! We hope that it made you as happy as it did Debbie Chai in the picture below.

May God bless you with His Abundant Grace and Mercy and Love,

Michael and Dorris Fortson

Founders and Executive Directors of Neema House/Village.