We are convinced these children need our help, so we want to maintain our support of the orphanage. This means we raise the minimum € 18,000 to continue the same level of support. But, of course our long-term vision is to expand our support!

Due to the following factors the financial situation of the orphanage deteriorated significantly in the past few years:

• A 2012 law prohibits adoptions to parents that do not hold Malian nationality. As a result, fewer children are adopted and so the number of children needing help has been steadily increasing.

• Adoptive parents have often strongly supported the orphanage and given financial contributions, but as the number of adoptions decreased so did this steady source of this income.

• The political unrest in Northern Mali, the period of drought and the deterioration of the economy has led to the onset of a rural exodus which has led to Bamako’s growing population. This means that new, very poor neighbourhoods have been created outside the city. And as the number of inhabitants increases, so have the number of potential orphans.

For years, the state budget for the orphanage has substantially decreased. The state has failed to respond to the developments since 2012.

Orphanage director has reported that about the situation in the orphanage:

• There is a lack of carers to take care of the children. The orphanage director wrote to us at the end 2015 asking for more financial support from which to hire more carers.

• Food and medicine are scarce. As the current budget is insufficient for the care of all children, they often depend on emergency donations. Our initiative makes this possible, but we want all children to always be adequately cared for.

• Especially disabled children lack adequate care. They need more specialised care and urgently need more medical help.

That’s why we need your help to raise our annual donation budget!

We want to create to be able to implement the following measures:

• We also want to increase our budget for medicine and food by about 15% each.

• Overall, we want to increase our annual budget.

Laura Pfälzner hands over € 6,000 to the orphanage director (May 2017).