President Khama to Visit GCHBC

This morning I had a meeting with Botswana's Office of the President. We discussed my NGO's needs and our impact in the Gabane community before they made a major announcement... Botswana's President Lieutenant General Seretse Khama Ian Khama would like to award Gabane Community Home-Based Care with a "Community Service Day" to be held this Friday at the Center! He is dedicated to giving back to organizations throughout the country that are make a positive contribution and he has selected my NGO to be the next recipient of this support. His Excellency will be accompanied by the Vice President, Members of Parliament, and others at this event.

The event would be a community service project facilitated by His Excellency and assisted by staff from his office, other government employees, and the Gabane community. The main project would be expanding our garden. This decision was a result of our meeting. During a tour of the Center, they asked about our garden, which is small but provides enough vegetables to supplement the meals for our Pre-School program. I told them that we aspire to triple the size of our garden by the end of 2014 so that we can provide fresh vegetables to our home-based care patients as well as to the children. We had not started the expansion project, however, because manpower is limited since everyone at the Center is volunteer. In response, they told me that the President would like to ensure that we achieve this goal and that the vegetables flourish. Therefore, they would provide the resources for us to triple the garden, including providing the labor, materials, seedlings, etc. They would also put in an irrigation system since water in this dry country is a problem. The President will work alongside members of the community to make sure this project is a success and our garden is able to provide for those we care for.

Everyone at Gabane Community Home-Based Care is overjoyed and grateful for this opportunity. Having an expanded garden will me exceedingly beneficial to our Center and to those we work so tirelessly to help. With sincere gratitude, we welcome the President of Botswana to our humble little Center and thank him for his contribution. This has been a big year for us - first meeting President Bush and now President Khama - and we are forever appreciative of it. It is because of this type of support that we have the confidence to keep pushing forward.