Hello friends!

First of all, the LuziCare Project Team would like to thank everyone who turned up this past Saturday evening at the Funktion Benefit Concert at Colby College.  People got funky!  Indeed, the windows were sweating condensation.  I hope all of you had as much fun as we did. We raised a tremendous sum of money in little more than an hour.  To all those who attended, thank you so much for your generosity and your continued support!

In late August, we wired a sum of $5,800 to Mr. Paul Kwengwere, Pendulum Project Malawi’s  Executive Director and our primary contact in Malawi.  He will be overseeing the distribution of funds.  The staff at Luzi Orpan Care Organization has already begun the project’s implementation.  In conjunction with Ellen McCurley and Mr. Kwengwere, we developed a detailed schedule for the project’s implementation. We expect regular reports regarding progress on the ground.

Thus far funds have been released for the ambulance bicycles.  We were delighted to learn only recently that the bikes will be built by Luzi’s own skillful artisans, mostly adolescents who have acquired their welding expertise through vocational skills training programs offered by Luzi’s staff and volunteers.  We anticipate another update in the near future.  We have requested photographs documenting the achievement of important benchmarks, such as the delivery of the ambulance bicycles or the training of the volunteer community health workers, and I look forward to sharing these with you when they come.

We have had great success raising funds this fall here at Colby. We hope to double the sum raised last year in this round of fundraising.  Thanks to the consistent generosity of the Colby community, we are well on our way to achieving our $12,000 goal.

Please check back regularly for updates.

Thank you!

Jamie Goldring ‘09

Many months have passed since my first post. I sincerely apologize for the delay; in the future, we hope to use LuziCare.com as our primary means of communication regarding regular happenings and progress in the project’s implementation. We have been quite busy since our campaign kickoff in November. Thanks to the tremendous generosity of Colby students, faculty, and staff and a truly touching show of support from friends and family at a fundraiser in Newton, Massachusetts, we have raised upwards of $6,000 in only seven month’s time! To all who contributed, to all who gave generously of their time to assist us in planning fundraisers and generating publicity, to all who showed up time and time again at our events, we thank you!

The project has evolved considerably since we introduced it to the wider public back in November. Confronted by rising prices both here in the United States and in Malawi, we have decided to reduce the scale of the project and scrap our travel plans. In our recently updated budget, which you can view by accessing the “donate” link in the menu on the left side of this page, we allocated $2,000 for the purchase of ten bicycles and $1,200 for the purchase of four padded stretcher carts. We sincerely believe that these changes will not greatly diminish the impact or scope of our project.

Additionally, we have decided against traveling to Malawi this summer. Still, to this day, LuziCare is proud to report that every dollar donated will directly fund the implementation of the project proposal. In collaboration with our friends at Luzi Orphan Care Organization, we believe that we have developed a creative approach to addressing the inadequacies of the national healthcare system in a community comprised of people in dire need of attention. We are simply unwilling to jeopardize our common vision and goals by diverting monies away from the project to fund our travel expenses.

In recent weeks, we have developed a four phase plan for the implementation of the project. Funds will be distributed according to an arranged schedule. Weekly or biweekly reporting will ensure accountability; certain pre-determined benchmarks will help us track Luzi’s progress. We have decided to funnel the funds through the Pendulum Project, a small and trusted Boston-based NGO with which I traveled to Malawi several summers ago. Their Malawian staff will be integral to the success the project’s implementation. We are tremendously grateful for their support. More on the specifics of this “four phase roll out” in the coming weeks.

This student-led initiative was born only eight months ago. We owe our recent success to the support and generosity of the Colby community, our friends, and our families. Again, thank you so very much for your generous support! In the coming weeks, donors will receive a letter in the mail that more explicitly addresses the changes I highlighted here. I hope to begin updating this blog on a regular basis, especially once work begins on the ground in Malawi. Should we remain on schedule, the money could arrive in Malawi as early as August.

Please check back frequently for updates. As always, don’t hesitate to contact us with questions, concerns, suggestions, etc.

All the best!

Jamie Goldring

If you’re reading this post then you’ve already heard about our campaign kickoff this coming Tuesday night at the Pub. We plan to introduce our project to the Colby community that evening, officially kicking off our fundraising drive. I encourage everyone to attend, if only for a few minutes, to speak with us about our project. We hope that our enthusiasm for this exciting initiative will become contagious on this campus; with your support, we can make a very real difference in one of Malawi’s most impoverished communities.

Several months in the making, LuziCare is the latest rendition of a project we developed last December in hopes of securing some grant money through the 100 Projects for Peace initiative. We are applying again this year, but we can’t accomplish the project in its current form without additional funding.

I look forward to sharing this project with you over the next several months. Our project is feasible, substantial in scope, and sustainable. I am passionate about this cause, and in time you will feel similarly. Please join us in spreading the word!

Do not hestitate to contact us with questions, concerns, suggestions, etc.

Welcome aboard!

Jamie