Tekstvak: Hope Village Namibia One foot on the premises and you will be surrounded by the joy of life. Eighty happy children are running around. Twelve hardworking mommies are taking care of the children like they are their own. Children who went through a lot of problems, but here they have found their new homes. Welcome in Hope Village. Past Hope Village is incorporated by Pastor Marietjie de Klerk in 2004 with the aim to help the children who are victims of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Hope Village goes further than providing just food and a bed; the children grow up in a warm and loving environment with lots of personal attention for their development and wellbeing. For example Doreen, fourteen year old girl, is getting singing classes, nine boys started a dance group and one boy, Boma, made it to the selection of a youth soccer team. One of the most beautiful things of Hope Village is that they also offer the children a good future. The Namibian government is providing caretakers of orphans a monthly allowance. The children have a personal bank account where this monthly allowance is paid into. Irrespectively of the age, the children can stay in Hope Village until they will go to university, find a job or when they’re getting married. In short, when they will have a new home. They can either use the money on their bank account to start a new live, or to pay their university or to buy a house. Present Hope Village is situated in the middle of Katutura, the township of Windhoek. It consists of a clinic, four vegetable tunnels, a library and four houses. In each house there is room for 24 children. The children are referred to Hope Village by the Namibian Child Protection, a hospital or a social worker. In the clinic HIV positive ladies can get formula feeding for their baby’s to prevent that the virus will be transmitted through breastfeeding. Four HIV positive ladies are working in the vegetables tunnels. Their children are living in Hope Village. Future The future plans of Hope Village are extensive. They want to appoint a doctor for the clinic to start an AIDS clinic and hospice. Furthermore they want to open a library with a place to study and with computers for both the children of Hope Village and for the children of the neighborhood. In the library they want to open a soup kitchen providing a hot meal every day for the children of the area. When Hope Village Windhoek is finished, Marietjie’s dream is not fulfilled. She wants to build nine more Hope Villages in different places in Namibia, providing a home for one hundred children each. This way the children will get personal care, and Marietjie will take care of approximately 1000 children. The plot for the second Hope Village is already bought in Rehoboth, a village at the south of Windhoek. Furthermore there are some early plans for a third Hope Village in Rundu, a village in the north of Namibia near the border with Angola. Hope Village has developed a good marketing management. They always make sure that their donations are getting a lot of attention in the local media. Therefore local companies are willing to support Hope Village; the clinic is recently opened by Kalahari Sands Hotel, Standard Bank Windhoek donated a new combi-bus and Price Waterhouse Coopers donated the costs for building the fourth house. Furthermore there are often companies or private individuals who are donating money, food or clothes. Hope Village has managed that the English band UB40 gave a benefit concert in Windhoek in February 2011. With the profit of the concert they can build Hope Village Rehoboth. You can find more information about the concert on www.hope.com.na. Do you want to have an impression of the daily live in Hope Village? Take a look at the photo story or read the story’s of the volunteers with their experiences.