Posts Tagged ‘Sweden’

Children with the Package

After months of planning and hard work, the children of Esther’s Hope received their package from Sweden. Two 18-year-old students who live just outside Stockholm, Sweden – Caroline Broliden and Linda Klaesson – gathered needed items from their community as part of a school project.

The most difficult part of the project was delivering the goods. Getting a package to Monrovia, Liberia, through customs and into the hands of the intended recipient is no easy feat, not to mention expensive. The package was sent a couple of weeks ago. Last week when I spoke to Pastor Andrew by phone, he excitedly informed me that he had received it. He promised to send photos. When his email arrived, it included photos and an image of a scanned page of thanks, hand written by the children.

Here’s Pastor Andrew’s message…

Inside the Box

Dear Rev. Pevlor,

Praise the Lord that I finally received the love gift that was sent by those two sisters, Caroline and Linda.

Please note Sir that the gifts were warmly welcomed and appreciated by the Kids. The scripture states that little is much when God is in it.

We never saw these gifts as a School project, but deeper than that. The Kids were touched by the love expressed through those items. One of them was concerned that if some one could dare send you a sizy Catton of not much items from all the way Europe indicates genuine love expressed in action which is Christ’ desire for humanity.

Caroline and Linda, as I mentioned your encouraging note to the Kids – they in turn decided to reply their love through few of those words attached to this note. And each of them wrote those words themselves I was not there to supervise them in doing it neatly or not, that is why you can see the copy as raw as it is. They also thumb printed their note; each expressing what they feel about your action.

Children with some of the items.

Here are the contents Received:

* Clothes: – 52pices

* Sheets: – 13 pieces

* Towels: – 7 pieces

* Notepad: – 35 pieces

* Toys: – 7 pieces.

God bless you Sir; we will stay in touch, as I am compiling a brief report regarding the monthly support.

Pastor Andrew

The Children Write Thanks (Click this image to see all of the children's comments.)

A day later Caroline and Linda sent a response to Pastor Andrews message and photos.

Caroline and Linda

We are happy to hear that the items sent were appreciated! We know it’s not much, but it was harder than we imagined to send this box to you. It was easy to collect the items with the help of peoples generosity. However, it’s not easy to send a box of items all the way to Liberia without the help of a larger and established organization. We did our best and hope that what we did will inspire more people to help.

We are very grateful for the pictures and letters from the children!

The next step of our project is to write an essay about our primary problem, how hard it was to help children in an other part of the world without working for an international organization. It’s easy to donate money and clothes but it is harder to do more than that without working for the organization. We will also compare different organizations and how they work.

Linda and Caroline

If you have a project in mind to help the children of Esther’s Hope, you can Contact us through this website. Monetary donations can easily be made using your credit/debit card by clicking on the Donate button.

Caroline Broliden and Linda Klaesson

Our friends from Sweden, Caroline Broliden and Linda Klaesson, collected a variety of items for the Victorious Faith Refuge Home and the children of Esther’s Hope.  The items were collected locally and shipped to Monrovia.  Here’s their latest report:

Hi Pastor Bill,

Yesterday me and Caroline went to the post office and sent the package to Monrovia, Liberia. We hope it will get there in perfect condition. Most of the content is clothes, and also some bed sheets and then some toothbruses, toys, pens, and some notebooks. We hope Esther’s Hope will have use of all the things in the box.

Caroline and Linda sorting and packing the box.

We also received a code from the mail office so we are able to follow, at their webpage, the box as it travels from Sweden to Liberia. If you are interested I can give you the code and the web address, otherwise I’ll update you about when the box is expected to arrive to Monrovia so you can contact pastor Andrew in time.

It will take awhile to make it from Sweden to Liberia. We’re hoping to provide photos from the Refuge Home, when the package arrives.  Watch for further updates.

If you’d like to help the children of Esther’s Hope and have a project in mind – like Caroline and Linda – just drop us a line.  And, as always, donations are easily made with a credit/debit card using PayPal – just click the Donate button.

After a brief pause for the holidays, our gals in Sweden are back on the job.  Caroline Broliden and Linda Klaesson have collected a variety of items they intend to ship to the Victorious Faith Refuge Home for the children of Esther’s Hope.  They are discovering a main obstacle to providing  aid to a third world country – how to get it there safely and at a reasonable cost.

We have people all over the world who read this blog.  I’ve got to believe someone can offer some insight or help them make the necessary contacts. If anyone has any ideas, please offer your suggestions as a comment to this post.

Here’s the latest report from Sweden, including a lesson in international commerce…

Caroline and Linda

We still have to get in touch with the Liberian embassy to get information about eventual fees or taxes in Liberia when bringing material into the country. The taxes (if there are any) are set by the Liberian government to protect the local market from being out conquered by cheaper products donated by other countries. If there are cheap products (or even free products) donated by other countries, for example, European, the local businesses don’t stand a chance. Because they have to sell their products for a higher prise to be able to survive. Therefore the government can add a cost (fees or taxes) to the imported or donated products. But it is possible to bring a small amount of products into Liberia without having to pay extra fees; the problem is that we are not sure where the limit goes and that the fees vary from product to product.About the delivery, we have a few different options, but none that we feel is great, so we are continuing our search for the best way to ship the material. The options we have now are a bit too expensive, but on the other hand very fast. But it is not so important for us that the material gets to Liberia within a week. We could finance the shipping ourselves with some help from donations (the interest to help is out there, we saw it when we got the material donated). But we feel that the cost is too high for what the material is worth and that the money could be put in a better use, providing more for the children in Liberia than paying for expensive shipping.

At the moment we are looking into the possibility of delivering the material from Kenya to Liberia instead of from Stockholm to Liberia. Caroline’s mother is going to Kenya in February and it is possible that she can take our package with her on her flight and then hiring a company that can deliver it to Liberia. But we don’t know how much that would cost yet, we have to know the cost for the overweight on the plane and the delivery cost within Africa. But we also have to know the weight of the package, which we have been working on by weighing different things separately so that we know the approximate weight of a bed sheet, pillow case, pencils and clothes.

One thing we haven’t done yet is calculate the volume of the package, but we have not yet decided exact what to send either, maybe we can send all the material we have collected, but we are not sure, it depends on the cost. But we really want to send as much material as possible, but if that is impossible we’ll try to send what we think is mostly needed and things that is most worth the cost. We don’t feel like a bed sheet (which is heavy and quite large) may not be worth the cost per kilogram as school material (which is not as heavy).

We’ll work more on the project now the holidays are over and we’ll be able to send you some pictures soon as well.

Caroline and Linda

We are grateful for the initiative and effort Linda and Caroline on behalf of Esther’s Hope.  If you have an idea to improve the quality of life for our children, please contacts us.  And don’t forget, donations can easily be made using your credit/debit card by clicking our Donate button.

Linda collecting some of the items left for Esther's Hope

The girls in Sweden have been busy.  The latest report from Linda and Caroline….

Hi Pastor Bill,

Today we collected the items people had donated. We distributed about 150 flyers and 40 of them also got a plastic bag with the flyer, we hoped it would encourage people if we made the flyer more unusual by adding a bag. And it really did.

Of the 40 people with plastic bags, 4 donated something, one “only” some bed sheets and others two large bags with both clothes, toys and sheets. And only one other of the remaining 110 people donated, a pair of pants and 4 shirts. So it really made a difference.

So today we unpacked everything that we got from these very generous five households. But we got many sheets, probably because people usually don’t get rid of them often, the same with towels. And some of them were also sealed and never used, which can reflect that people buy things they later realizes that they don’t want or that they weren’t fashionable.

We received:

- Towels (12 small, 3 large)

- Sheets (12 bottom sheets, 20 pillow cases and 17 duvet covers)

- Sealed toothbrushes 10

- Pencils and pens 28

- Clothes

- Stuffed animals and 5 barbie dolls with clothes

All the items we got were in great shape as well, and we are very grateful for that. Clothes are easier to get rid of and therefore they don’t lay around for a very long time. It can be inherited or simply thrown away.

Caroline and Linda

Linda Klasson and Caroline Broliden live near Stockholm, Sweden and are working on their project to collect and send items to the needy children of the Victorious Faith Refuge Home in Monrovia, Liberia. Some of their greatest challenges lie ahead.

Check back often for updates on their progress.

Here is an update from the Esther’s Hope “Sweden Project” with Caroline Broliden and Linda Klaesso.  They have organized an effort to collect needed items to send to the Victorious Faith Refuge Home in Monrovia, Liberia. They began publicizing their project through the distribution of fliers at the beginning of the week.

Caroline and Linda

Here’s their report…

Almost everyone that have learned about our project have been very positive about it and impressed that we want to spend all this time helping others without getting anything but gratitude and a warm feeling in our hearts in return. There have been some questions about which children’s home we’ll donate to and how we would get material to send to Liberia. And also how we’re going to get the material to Liberia, which now is our biggest concern.

We know that it is possible via the government owned delivery system, but we also suspect there is a cheaper way to get it to the children. If we spend too much money delivering the material it would diminish the whole purpose of the project.

At the time we are looking for the cheapest possible way to deliver the material, whilst waiting for responses to the flyers we distributed two days ago. We are also unsure about customs fees or if there are any regulations concerning the amount you can donate without needing to pay taxes in Liberia.

According to http://liberia.visahq.com/customs/ it seems as if we can donate “gifts” valued below $125 USD. But since the material we’ll collect will be donated it could be hard to value them, and also because it would be used items which will lower the value of the items.

We’ve been in contact with the Swedish embassy in Senegal (since Liberia doesn’t have Swedish representation) and the Liberian embassy in Germany (as Liberia is not represented in Sweden) and some other public authorities. But they have all directed us to the Liberian embassy in Germany, which hasn’t answered yet.

This has been our biggest concern, but our greatest triumph is how enthusiastically people seem to be about helping us and the children in Liberia. Even if the strangers that got our flyers don’t donate we’re sure we’ll get a whole lot of material from our family and friends that already support our project.

One more thing about how people respond to our project worth mentioning is the positive attitude of the responding e-mails we get from organizations and authorities. Everyone have been very helpful and even if they’ve been unable to help us they have been encouraging us to keep up the good work and happy about us wanting to help others.

Caroline and Linda

It is such a blessing to have others recognize the need, devise their own plan and work hard to help the children of Esther’s Hope. If you have any helpful ideas on how to get the donated items to Liberia inexpensively, please contact us.

Maybe you have some other ideas – like your own project to help. We’d love to hear about that as well.  The children of Esther’s Hope can use all the help we can give.

In the mean time, check back often for future updates from Sweden.