From time to time it is easy to question the achievements of a year gone by, but in sitting down to write this report I think it would be fair to say that this has been a year of significant achievements for such a small organisation especially one with little or nothing in the way of resources.

The first thing is to thank all those who have helped in any way.  I won’t name any particular person just yet, in fear of inevitably missing someone out.  You know who you are and my only hope is that over the year I have let you know how very much our contribution has meant to The Foundation and the people whom live it touches.

Encouragement and Students

One of the greatest pleasures and hopefully contributions we make each year is working with young undergraduates who are about to finishes their degrees and enter the work force.

This year our work with the students proved to be both a very valuable hands on experience for the students and a very valuable experience for our extremely worthwhile charity work.

There has also been some very valuable win win time spent with students who have been placed with us for a few weeks of their internship.  Two of these students have left us to go onto exciting jobs in the world of public relations.

The Foundation certainly benefits from their input and from what they tell me they find working with us very encouraging and feel that they benefit greatly from the real life hands-on experience.

Scholarships

Unfortunately funds are very limited but we have still managed to award some small study scholarships to both secondary and university students.

While our wonderful University of the Sunshine Coast has top ranking Australia wide for its teaching quality and also from student satisfaction, feedback it does have a large number of financially challenged students.

To these students even as little as $100 towards the purchase of text books can make a significance difference to their lives.

With this in mind we recently instigated a monthly $100 bookshop bursary.  Students who are members of TEF are eligible to go into a draw each month.  We are hoping we may be able to increase this to 3 awards each month.  It would be great to grow this small be significant contribution.

Prompters

Due to the large volume of traffic coming into peoples email in-boxes we have slowed up the number of direct emails we send to members.  We have instigated Facebook and Twitter in an effort to get out positives and contribute content to those who choose to receipt i.

Another initiative which should be available soon is what we are calling “gift of words” card.

Due to the voluntary efforts of one of our past USC graduates and her graphic artist friend we have got the final draft of a set of cards which people can use to gift to people they meet who may benefit from some encouragement given to them out of the blue.

Foundation Merger

We have progressed with our discussions with Mark O’Neill of The Rainbow Foundation regarding formally linking our two organisations together.

Mark will soon be appointed a Director of the Encouragement Foundation and we look forward to some great things happening going into the future.

Mark is no stranger to us and has been an integral part of the major work we are involved in in East Timor over the last couple of years.

He has not only been a generous financial supporter but has travelled to Timor for the last two years as part of the planning team on the annual trip, and his input has been invaluable.

Encouragement House – East Timor

Undoubtedly our largest project has been the work going on to help the young East Timorese students to educate themselves not only out of poverty but to the point where they can significantly better their chances in life and, as many of them want to do , make a contribution back to their country.

My great old friend and business partner is one of the humblest people in the world and will probably want to shoot me for mentioning him in this annual report.

I will have to take that risk but we cannot talk about Timor without talking about Robert (Bob) Dickson. He is undoubtedly the lynch pin, the driver and the inspiration behind the truly incredible works your Foundation is involved in in East Timor.

He of course has much support around him but without him and his partner Elizabeth the Timor project would simply not exist.  The good work happening up there is too enormous to properly report on here.  A good way to get some idea and to keep up to date is to go to our second website www.encouragementhourse.org.

One of the greatest moves forward this year is that we have been able to arrange, through a great organisation called Destination Dreaming to have groups of Grade 12 Aussie students visit the project and stay for up to a week to mix with the young Timorese students.

The feedback is amazing and inspiring form the Timorese students but even more so for the Aussie students many of whom rate is as significant and life changing as they meet people with very little in the way of material things but so much in the way of happy, hopeful, respectful and kind personalities.

We hope you as a member of the Foundation will allow yourself to feel some pride and satisfaction from this project.  I must admit that when I realised that we have 80 and soon to be 120 students in residence up there I am blown away.

Through this project you and I have the potential to touch many more lives than just the 120 students and their families and may even have a slight effect on Timor pulling itself out of being known as one of the poorest countries in the world and the poorest country in Asia.

Organised Trips to East Timor

Perhaps you may like to consider a trip to Timor some times in the future to inspect the empowering energy your project is producing.  We are presently working on a format for a fully guided tour of Timor including a few days at our project.

Please let us know if you are interested and we will keep you in the loop.  It has been a positive, worthwhile and uplifting trip for all of us who have been there thus far.

Volunteer English Teachers

Before I finish on East Timor you might like to know that the Timorese are desperate to learn English and we are presently talking with two people who want to go as a volunteer teacher for a month at a time.  Margaret, who lives in Maliana, already teaches English four nights a week as a friend and volunteer.

International University Links

We are also progressing negotiations to link the University of The Sunshine Coast with Timor University and will eventually be able to bring some of the teachers to the Sunshine Coast to help upgrade their teaching effectiveness.

In closing I would like to acknowledge one very special person who works with us behind the scenes.  Julia Mitchell, who use to work full time for us is always available in the background and among other things, keeps us alive in the electronic world.  Julia does this mostly on a voluntary basis.

I know I should not have started mentioning names, but now that I have I must pay sincere tribute to my beautiful daughter-in-law Jody Shadforth.  Jody has swung in behind Robert on the Timor project and is proving to be an invaluable part of the team.  Robert and I are particularly delighted by Jody’s inspiring intention and contribution.

Hopefully the younger people like Jody and Mark O’Neill will ensure the longevity of the organisation.

Finally I am indebted to my fellow Directors.  At this stage with such a small and under sourced organisation they may feel that they don’t have a lot of involvement, but even jus their ongoing support and endorsement of the Foundation is truly invaluable and very much appreciated.

I also thank McCullough Roberston, Lawyers and PWA Financial Group Pty Ltd for their pro bono professional advice and the latter’s fundraising for Encouragement House.

What a great trip! We were greeted ceremonially by our EH students who introduced themselves to us in English, which was pleasing. We had great interaction with them over our stay including group singing led by Jody Shadforth on guitar.

Deo and his family were wonderful as usual. We achieved a great deal in the work department also.

With the conclusion of Wombat construction  we can now accommodate 120 students, 60 boys and 60 girls. This also completes the first stage of Encouragement House providing accommodation for the students who attend Junior High school.

We have also been accepted totally by the government, which now pays the school fees for our children as well as providing them with rice, blankets and mats. Our children still grow their own vegies of which corn is a staple food source.

The low maintenance buildings should last for fifty years and the village parents or senior students can easily handle repainting and other repairs. It appears there will always be a heavy demand for the service provided by Encouragement House. Even if high schools are constructed in some of the more heavily populated villages in the Lolotoe sub-district, most of the other villages are too far away from each other to allow easy travel.

There is now a small university in Maliana, which is a part of the university in Dili. We had the real pleasure of visiting this university, which only has 130 students. It has been going for only 10 months and teaches English and Social Science?  We were lucky to have on our team John Dobson, who is the Chancellor of the University of the Sunshine Coast. The academic staff and pupils were delighted with John Dobson’s speech of encouragement to them. There may be a way of forging closer relationship between these universities. We believe some good things will come out of that meeting for the Timorese students as well as our own EH students and our Sunny Coast students. We are already working on some ideas.  John is pictured below with the head of the Maliana University.

By the time you read this newsletter we will have our third group of Australian students staying with us at EH. This time the young people are from the Scotch Oakburn College in Launceston. The nine students are in their senior year. There are two teachers accompanying them as well as our good friend Clint Miller from Destination Dreaming, who has arranged the tour.

These tours bring revenue to EH and the students also donate money for improvements.  The last tour built a much-appreciated shelter shed for us. This is 10 metres long by 4 metres wide and was used constantly by the EH students, particularly in the early evening when they played guitars and sang.

The greatest benefit is to the students of both countries. You have already shared some of the letters from the Australian kids about the way the trip has changed their lives for the better. The tours have the same result for the Timorese who are just as excited.

Stage two, the construction of the next accommodation block for the EH students who will be going to the Senior High school will commence in January 2012 after the wet season finishes.

This will be named Kookaburra to continue our OZ theme. So with your kind assistance we will start funding for this immediately. We believe we will need almost $70,000 to complete a fully furnished and operational Kookaburra ready for the next 40 students. We already own the land for stage 2, which is within easy walking distance from the Senior High.

The others who travelled to Timor with Liz and I this year were John Shadforth, John Dobson, Jody Shadforth, Barb Dickson and Mark O’Neill whose wife Kim and three teenage daughters came last year.

As a group and with Deo’s family we had a magical time and made a lot of good decisions for the future of Encouragement House. Once again thank you to Deo, Dahlia, Ben and Tina and the girls who looked after us so well whilst we were there.

We already have some people interested in next year’s trip. Please see if you have the time to spare to join us. It is a great and very unusual experience.

Thank you again for your wonderful support.

Sincerely,

Robert and Jody

Email robliz1@bigpond.com

07 5493 6943

0408 708 161

I just looking through your website and I saw the Encouragement House newsletter, and I thought maybe you would be interested in my perspective of our visit. I want to tell people about how great a cause it is.

At school, when I signed up for the trip to East TimorI had no idea how inspirational and eye opening it would be. The people of East Timor are the nicest people I have ever met. I have made so many friends during the brief 7 days we spent in Maliana, friends that I will always keep in my heart and who I will never forget. For people who have so little in comparison to us, they gave us so much.

The highlight of our trip was definitely our stay at Encouragement House. Originally it was not planned in our trip, but I am so glad that it was. During our trip we got to meet Kevin Rudd and president Jose Ramos Horta, which was super exciting, but I’d have chosen our stay at Encouragement House over that any day.

Saying goodbye to all my friends at Encouragement House was one of the hardest and saddest things I’ve had to do thus far. Everyone was crying (Australians and East Timorese alike, even Deo shed a few tears), because we were all heartbroken to have to say goodbye to each other. Seeing the impact that we had made on them, and realising the impact they had made on us was such a deep emotional experience that touched my heart and I will never forget it.

The students staying at Encouragement House are so nice, generous and caring. The girls cooked us the best meals, we played games with each other (volleyball, football), sang songs and even had a disco dance party. Did you know that Justin Bieber is really popular in East Timor too?

I am so amazed and impressed that all these kids my age leave their homes and families to come to Encouragement House and receive an education; in Australia education is something that we take for granted, whilst in East Timor it is a privilege. Encouragement House gives all these kids this privilege, a chance for the future. To me it was like one big family—a big happy, peaceful family.

My friends and I that went on this trip all agree that we want to come back next year when we finish school as a group by ourselves, to visit Timor Leste and Encouragement House again.

My experience with Encouragement house was amazing and I will never forget it. I think that it is such a great thing to do and support, and being a part of it for just a few days we were welcomed into the family with friendship and kindness that truly has touched my heart.

I already miss EastTimor and Encouragement House so much, so do my friends who came on the trip with me.
Thank you Robert and Deo for giving me this opportunity to experience Encouragement House, I loved every single bit of it.

Yours sincerely,
Gina

P.S If the encouragement house kids get to read this can I say hi to Apeil, Nicko, Linda, Anus, Jonnie, Eggie, the two Emmanos, Anson, Julianao, Aldo and everyone else! Miss you guys so much.

P.P.S I also attached a group photo of all of us- it is when we were saying good bye so a lot of us look pretty sad. I’m the one up the back near the middle with brown hair in a brown shirt.

There are many good things to share with you since our last newsletter.

To start with, Deo sent these photos in the last few days and they capture the spirit of our children at EH as they live each day there.

You can see the children are busy preparing the soil for the next planting. EH children grow lots of their own vegetables. You may remember last year they grew enough corn from one crop to last them three months. Corn and rice are the staple food of Timor.

We are also lucky that Maliana district is the main rice producer for Timor so we should be able to maintain supplies. Just for interest, some of the vegetables the children grow are sam choy, kangkun, carrots, cabbage, sweet potatoes, garlic and tomatoes.

Deo’s mother, Tina, can buy everything else they need from the local market. Besides pork, beef, chicken and eggs she can buy sugar, salt, cooking oil and clothing.

The other photo of the children checking rice sacks I believe really has some good meaning for us. The government Minister for Sustainability gave Encouragement House 20 sacks of rice, 80 blankets and 80 mats.

I feel we are very much on their radar and are greatly appreciated for our help providing remote area children from the Lolotoe sub-district with the opportunity of becoming educated beyond primary school.

We hope every one of you kind supporters feels great satisfaction in creating Encouragement House and knowing it will go on bringing educational opportunity for 50 or 100 years. It will be exciting to see what career paths our children follow in only a few more years from now.

Another measurable way to understand the project, based on present building costs, is that for every $2,000 we provide one bed place that will go on indefinitely. This of course includes the land, building and furniture surrounding that bed. We receive extraordinary use of our money when you think of it like that.

In July this year, the first of two Australian student groups arrive to stay at our new building, Wombat. Although these tours will provide a financial benefit to Encouragement House, more importantly they provide a wonderful learning and cultural experience for both our children and the touring students.

These tours were arranged by Clint and Kate Miller whose email is info@destinationdreaming.com.au We have been talking with Clint and Kate for a year or so and they are very dedicated and professional people who wish to bring life-changing experiences, for the good to their groups. We will report back to you in a couple of months. We feel good things will come from these tours.

Speaking of trips, this year in August, we have seven supporters traveling to stay for a week at Encouragement House. We will tell you more of that trip in September.
Of course everyone will pay his or her own way and contribute to EH at the same time. These trips are a great opportunity for anyone who wishes to experience life in a safe and developing country and to do so in a friendly, organized group. Please contact me if you are interested or wish to know more.

The last photo shows the cooking team inspired by Tina. What a marvel she is.

When you think that in the villages where the children live, cooking meals is almost done entirely using a wood or dung burning fire. This is in the open or at best, in an open tin shed to let the smoke out. Now you will appreciate what is on offer at Encouragement House. All the children, boys and girls, learn how to cook.

Thank you again for your great support. With the tax year coming to a close, those of you who would like to help with a donation, please remember we can give you a full tax deduction for the money you are giving.

Keep well and feel free to call me anytime. Also, you may like to consider planning a trip with us to experience Encouragement House.

Sincerely and thanks from

Robert Dickson and Jody Shadforth

Hello Everyone! Here’s more good news….

You can see from the most recent photo received from Deo that the construction of Wombat is now well under way. Timor has been having the same monsoon weather we have been having so things have been a bit delayed.

You can get a good feel from the photo just how Encouragement House with its distinctive Encouragement Foundation colors, settles on the block of land. The children walk to school every morning. They only have to walk 75 metres to the junior high school entrance. What a difference for most of them who have had to walk miles to and from school each day.

Once Wombat is ready for occupancy in August 2011 we will have completed the Junior High School stage of Encouragement House. This includes the three dormitories – Kangaroo, Koala and Wombat – that provide accommodation, kitchens and study areas for 120 children. In addition to the three buildings we have built two individual house-parent supervisor houses.
Your contribution to this project has made a massive difference, not only to the lives of the 120 children who are now able to go to high school, but to their families as well.

Also the local economy has been helped with the purchase of all the building materials. These include rocks and sand from the river and bricks from the little backyard brickworks. The windows, doors, beds, lockers and kitchen furniture are all made locally and of course the laborers are local too!

Although the EH children grow a great deal of their vegetables, there are many things purchased from the local market on a daily basis. Pork, chicken and beef and bread are all local produce. We have also increased the school population and the flow on required more teachers to be employed and the possible expansion of the school itself.

The District-Administrator, who opened Encouragement House in September 2009, was very excited about the project. Deo continues to liaise with him and his department.

So congratulation and thank you again from the EH team. Your past and continuing support gives us hope that we can make a difference in these kid’s lives.

In our next newsletter we will talk about the Senior High School and the excitement of that project.

Sincerely,
Robert Dickson
Robliz1@bigpond.com
71 Boolagi Drive, Wurtulla 4575
Phone 07 5493 2253 0408 708 161

We were also so lucky in having Mark and Kim O’Neill and their three daughters, Jaigar 19, Teegan 16 and Imogen 13, come on the trip with us. They were amazing. We also took along three little laptop XO computers that the O’Neill girls demonstrated to our EH children and in four or five different schools.

We hope this initiative will help accelerate learning by the school children, if we can find a way to fund and introduce the XOs. As you can see from the photos the Timor kids accepted the laptops with great enthusiasm. They are all keen to become educated. For those of you who would like to know more, please visit One Laptop Per Child.

The photos in this newsletter contrast some of the remote and beautiful high country near where our kids were born with the urbane group of 13 year olds in their Encouragement House uniforms. This photo also highlights Deo in the blue striped shirt and his father Benjamin and mother Tina. These people are the reason for the outstanding success of Encouragement House.

Encouragement House has become widely known as a success story and not only in the Lolotoe and districts it serves. We have formed relationships with other agencies and this should lead to benefits in education and support or opportunities for our children as time goes on.

Koala, the accommodation building we completed this year at Encouragement House cost US$63,000 including all furniture, bedding and kitchen equipment. We took a photo in Lolotoe of a new building under construction as a maternity clinic. It is of similar size and the signboard out the front declares it will cost US$141,000. I think we are keeping our pencil sharp.

All credit goes to Deo and his family because they buy the building materials as well as supervise the builder.

Since Koala’s completion all the boys live in Kangaroo and the girls in Koala. Koala also contains two separate bedrooms each 3m x 4m. These act as accommodation rooms for the parents of our children when they walk over the mountain from their villages to Maliana to see their children. Remember, the shortest distance is a walk of 25kms. The parents are able to stay for two days at a time.

The US dollar is at a very good exchange rate for us. I really hate to mention it but if you can see your way to sending some money for the next stage of Encouragement House, it would be greatly appreciated. All money is fully tax-deductible and there are absolutely no administration costs taken from your kind donations. When Liz and I or friends travel to Timor it is of course at our own costs. Jody Shadforth volunteers her time with the administration. John Shadforth and I wouldn’t sleep nights if we thought the cost of even one postage stamp came from donor funds.

Please phone or contact me if you wish to know anything about Timor or Encouragement House.

Sincerely,
Robert Dickson
07 5493 2253

Below are some recent photos which show the children about to plant tomatoes. This will help to feed the children as well as teaching them basic gardening skills and encourage them in self sufficiency and self confidence.

Recently the children harvested enough corn on the land at Encouragement House to feed them for three months.  Corn is a staple food in Timor and we found this to be very exciting.

The enclosed photo shows the foundations for the new building, Koala, while Kangaroo, in orange, is in the background. Koala will be a duplicate of Kangaroo and will provide accommodation for the next 40 children. So we will then have 80 children receiving a high school education. When Koala is ready for occupancy in September this year, we will be able to have one block for girls and one for boys.

You can also see in the center of the photo, the water well. Good quality water was struck at 13 metres depth.

After Easter the children returned from their first school holiday since the start of the school year. I imagine there may have been a few tears on their arrival home. Probably some more tears when it was time to go back to school as well. Deo arranged for a truck to take the children to and from the villages. That would have been a great photo but it is scary thinking of it on those horrible roads.

You will be delighted to know that the children have harvested their first crop of corn grown on EH land.  Deo says there is enough corn to last them 3 months. The kids have other crops growing around the houses too. They have sweet potato, cassava, beans and other veggies. They also have easy access to coconuts, pawpaw and mango later on in the year.

Deo recently bought 10 bags of rice that he says will last 3 months. A bag of rice weighs 35kgs and costs $15. Maliana is the main rice producing area in Timor.

Friends in Mornington, Victoria purchased some guitars for the kids. Deo and two of his musical friends, (who have their own band) are volunteer music teachers at EH. So we can close this newsletter on a musical note J

A BRIEF REPORT

• We received 134 applications for the 40 first stage places available for 2010 year.
• The first hostel has been named Kangaroo.
• It takes 4 hours driving time in a 4 x 4 to travel the 37 kilometres between Maliana, where the hostel is situated and Lolotoe, the district of 7 villages where the children live.
• The opening ceremony was attended by the District Administrator, Maliana, the Sub District Administrator, Lolotoe, reps from the UN, the police chief and importantly the District and Regional Education Director
• The land for the hostel for the junior high school cost US$3,700
• The hostel building, Kangaroo and the 2 supervising parent houses cost almost US$48,000
• Stage 2, the building of Koala, the next hostel will commence in April 2010 and should cost about US$50K with a couple of small changes we have made.
• The Aussie $ is presently helpful to us changing into US $s. We would appreciate any donation you are considering to be quicker than later as we can hold the US$ at ANZ Dili. Who knows with money exchange timing anyway.

A MORE DETAILED REPORT

On Saturday 14 September last, Deo met us at the airport in Dili and we drove the 140 kms to Maliana in the usual 4 hours. This included a tucker stop at the Lois River where we ate the usual rice, fish and chook for $1 per head. The café toilet trip
included a slip-slide down an embankment using wooden steps on a tree branch,
crossing the yard through chooks, pigs, goats and children playing. The toilet is the
usual type. Take hand swipes in your back-pack.

In Maliana we were welcomed by Deo’s wonderful, happy family. We were given the honour of sleeping in the new house parent house and this suited us just to have the experience living at the hostel. Tina, Deo’s mother and his sister Lota cooked for everyone in the new hostel kitchen.

We toured the local area and could see just how difficult it is for children from local village communities to get to school. Some of them walk as much as 10 kms each way, every school day. Our hostel provides accommodation for the children from the Lolotoe district. The closest village is 37 kms away from Maliana. The truck between Maliana and Lolotoe takes over 4 hours to travel that distance and costs $6 per person, an impossible cost for most people.

On Tuesday Deo and I checked all the construction costs for the building. Every
receipt for every purchase has been filed and properly accounted for and recorded. I feel very satisfied that the building costs are accurate and honest.

Ben Kildea and his wife Sally Johnson are wonderful resident volunteers from
Australia who live at Maliana hospital. Sally is a midwife and teaches her profession at Maliana and the isolated communities such as Lolotoe. Ben is a civil engineer doing splendid work around the country. Ben has had constant contact with the hostel during the construction period. He told me that a new building about half as big again as our hostel cost US$80,000 and the building quality was inferior to the hostel. This is great news. The District Administrator told Deo he should tender on future government building projects as he was very impressed with the price and building construction.

The opening ceremony for the hostel was on Wednesday as reported above. The priest blessed the building and after the official ceremony we enjoyed excellent food of rice, chook and salad. Dessert of crème caramel followed.

Deo , Liz and I drove off to Lolotoe district in the afternoon. We covered the 37 kms to Gildapil, Deo’s home village in the stated 4 hours. The roads are quite perilous. Passing is nearly impossible, but luckily there are hardly any vehicles. It may require some 50 or 100 metres of backing up to find a place to slip into while the other truck passes. We are talking about serious cliff edge driving. A great place to hold the Tour De Timor mountain bike race next time.

The people of Gildapil usually walk to Maliana as they can skirt one mountain through a pass and save the $6 fare. I’m told they set out at midnight and reach the market at Maliana for the morning sale of their coffee or exchange for rice, which is grown in Maliana. All these experiences hammer into my head just how much our hostel is needed.

Please feel free to contact me anytime
Email: robliz@ourtelco.com.au
Home: 07 5493 2253
Mobile: 0408 708 161
Interested in a holiday in East Timor?

Anyone wishing to visit please feel free to phone or email me so we can help you with your trip planning!!

There is a great place to dive from the island of Atauro just off Dili, the capital city. There is a small resort owned and managed byan Aussie and his ET wife. Adequate accommodation is only about US$30 per night and probably includes food. Who cares at that price? The water is known for its clarity.

Up country is full of interesting things. There is accommodation at your own hostel at Maliana until the children move in on 2 January 2010. After that date, we can always pitch a tent at the hostel or stay at the hotel for $20 per night including breakfast.

Qantas Frequent Flyers take you from Brisbane to Dili if you are a member and have the points available.

Thank you for your support, Robert.

The school hostel is now a reality and will be ready for the first 40 children to move in by the start of the school year 2010.

The photos show the hostel with the roof going on. The small building to the right of the hostel is where the house parents will live. They will move in to their house in September this year and will be busy establishing the gardens and readying the hostel for the children.

Liz and I are using our Qantas frequent flier points for another trip to catch up with Deo and to check the progress of the projectin East Timor.

This will be an important visit as we will be planning future stages, amongst other things. We will have more photos to share with you then.

By the way, if you would like more information about Encouragement House or anything else to do with the project please email me at any time.

A number of people have expressed a possible interest in projects associated with the hostel and the children.

While it is a little too early for this at present we will keep you informed if you would like to register an interest.

On another note and in terms of the overall mission of The Encouragement Foundation we would like to acknowledge Deo’s parents Benjamin and Tina. They are great examples of real encouragers.

Their encouragement through education has now given all their children a path out of the poverty they may have suffered as farm hands in their remote rural village in the highlands of East Timor.

Their son, Deo, aged 28, has a booming future in East Timor and is devoting his life to charitable works and of course is very much involved with Encouragement House.

Florenzo, aged 26, is working for World Vision.

Mery, aged 21, is working for the Mary Stopes Foundation.

Lota, aged 19, is a full time student at uni learning tourism.

Deo, Florenzo and Mery all contribute financially to ensure Lota
completes her degree.

We all hope that Encouragement House will bring these opportunities to many more young Timorese people.