SCARF

One day M was having a general discussion with parents of a friend & we got onto SCARF. SCARF stands for Strategic Community Assistance to Refugee Families.

http://www.scarf1.org.au/

SCARF is an independent, not-for-profit, community based incorporated association established to enhance the resettlement process of permanent resident status refugee entrants in the Illawarra Region of NSW.

Was great to here that the Illawarra region was contributing to a worthy cause. By chance our company was looking for charity groups to donate old laptops (HP NC4000s with O/S & licence). Bingo, M organised 19 laptops for SCARF with an option to get more as time goes by. This was great to feel that we could contribute to something. M trained J to build laptops from scratch with Windows XP SP2, OpenOffice and all patches. We split the workload between the two of us plus another IT volunteer. All finished.

J may assist in teaching subjects as a volunteer once the kitchen is completed.

Ciao, M

Double digits

On 3rd April N turned 10. We were amidst kitchen chaos at the time so we posponed a birthday celebration til the 18th(last week of school hols). We invited her whole class to tenpin bowling, luckily the end number was 11 kids out of 27; so it turned out no more expensive than an at home party...minus the mess at the end to clean up. Everyone had a great time and N received a pile of creative toys to minimise the boredom of the last couple of days before returning to school.
The kitchen is nearly complete. I cooked a baked dinner in the small stove last night and during the day cooked a batch of cookies with N in the big oven (I haven't any small cookie trays yet to fit into the small oven!)

All last night and constantly since, it has been raining. Pelting down. While we have been putting in a new kitchen our next door neighbours have been putting in a pool. Luckily the pool is installed, but the rest of the yard resembles the bogs of the Somme after the autumn rains. An hour ago their new grass arrived....a good day to lay it. When I told N to get up for school today, she said "I can't go to school today...can't you hear the rain...it's too hard!", this from a girl who didn't complain about catching the school bus when it was minus 17 deg in Prague.