Visitation and birthday celebration!

Birthdays are a special occasion for the children in the projects that are run by ACRF.

Prior to the tsunami Acehnese children never celebrated their birthdays. This was started by our staff and now they look forward to the parties every other month.

We have gotten so big we have to combine the parties so that we can get all of the celebratees to have an equal part of the day and make it even more special.

Every child is given a gift and recognition from the staff when it is their birthday month.

Sister S, the Keeper of the House

Sis, as we call her is a great help to us here at the green house and a valuable member of our team. Not only does she provide valuable insight into the local culture, she is taking a computer course at a local college.

She helps us by doing the majority of the shopping, keeping track of the household expenses and cooking most of the meals. She always has a great smile and laughs a lot, which can cheer up most anyone on even the cloudiest of days. Without Sis I’m not sure we could operate as efficiently as we do.

Meet Matthew!

Meet Matthew, our latest associate who has come to join us for six months.

He is already fitting in quite easily, eating the local foods including durian, rice and fish. He is also learning the Indonesian language quite quickly and making friends with the children.

Glad to have you in the team Matthew!

Unexpected visitors in the Jantho facility!

Visiting Ibu Norhalim

We drove up and visited the facility at Jantho and met with Ibu Norhalim whose husband died a few weeks ago. He left her and eight children, three still living at home.

It is quite difficult for them as she can only sell peanuts in the local market or around the IOM camp. So, we gave her some rice to help with the food situation and said we would help more in the future.

Birthday party for 100!

The team had our monthly birthday party on the 26th of Oct. That went well with 80 children and 20 adults! We had so many show up that we ran out of gifts for everyone.

Visit from Pak Max and Jueni

We had Pak Max, our newest addition to our Medan team, come up to Banda Aceh with our project manager Jueni for some training and refreshing. They got to see our operations in Banda Aceh and also learn the new computer program.

It was a great time of refreshing for them and a chance for all the team to finally meet up!