Bethlehem is a children's home in Lubumbashi, in the south of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Fifty children live there. They are fed, they are sent to school, and they are looked after by people who love them. At night, most of them lie down on a concrete floor.
A floor is cold, and through the rainy season it stays damp. Children who sleep on one wake up stiff, they catch whatever is going around faster, and they carry that tiredness into the classroom the next morning. It is the kind of problem that is easy to overlook from far away and impossible to ignore once you have stood in the room.
A bed here is a simple thing. A foam mattress, a sheet, a blanket, and a mosquito net, bought from suppliers in Lubumbashi. That is the whole ask: one child, off the floor.
Fifty children, fifty beds, five thousand dollars by the thirtieth of November. Our team in Lubumbashi does the buying and the delivering, so your gift goes into mattresses rather than into shipping containers.
Give what you are able to give. Small gifts and large ones go to the same place and buy the same beds, and the campaign gets there because a lot of people each did a little.
What happens after you give
We buy in batches as the money comes in, our team delivers to Bethlehem, and we post photos of the beds going in. Nothing waits until the end of the campaign.
Prefer another way to give? Write to contactus@ailefoundation.org, or send Mobile Money to Airtel +243 960 895 614.
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