Additional Costs of the New Boarding Facility (nothing is ever easy)

Date: 3/21/07

Now that the construction on the new boarding facility has begun it has been discovered that Kupenda will need to raise an additional $6,718.75 for the building. The discrepancy is due to bad estimates of the initial cost and because exchange rates of US dollars to shillings has changed over the past year (during the time we did our fundraising).

AFC wants to help as much as possible. The money is needed by June 10th. We are prepared to donate money ourselves and we are working on thinking of creative ways to raise the rest of it.

So far we have come up with the following:

1. Holding a car wash on a Sunday at Grace Fellowship Church and have the Sunday School kids that we teach help us wash the cars.
2. Have a fundraising pancake breakfast.
3. Solicit our smart friends for other ideas and hopefully someone will want to take the reigns on and put on a charity event themselves!! :)

We will also be putting our donation page for Kupenda back up on our site just in case.

In this email from Cindy Bauer (Founder of Kupenda) she explains the exchange rate problem.

The total cost of the boarding facility (twin dormitory and dining hall is Kshs. 5,823,004.30 (Five Million, Eight Hundred and Twenty Three Thousand, Four Shillings and Thirty Cents Kenya Shillings). The dormitory alone is Kshs. 3,568,960.30 (Three Million, Five Hundred and Sixty Eight Thousand, Nine Hundred and Sixty and Thirty Cents Kenya Shillings) and that of the dinning hall is Kshs. 2,254,044 (Two Million, Two Hundred and Fifty Four Thousand, and Forty Four Kenya Shillings).

The cost of the single wing under construction is Kshs. 1.83M (One Million, Eight Hundred and Thirty Thousand Kenya Shillings). The actual deficit is Kshs. 430,000 (Four Hundred and Thirty Thousand Kenya Shillings).

So if we go with the worst exchange rate (64 Kenya shillings to the US dollar) that Ksh 430,000 is approximately $6718.75 USD. Another problem we had before was I was going with an average exchange rate of Ksh 74 to the US dollar. The issues of dealing with other countries.

-Pattt
LoveLife!

Kupenda's Boarding Facility!!

Date: 3/19/07

We got this email today. It is from Leonard who is a Kenya who works for Kupenda in Kenya! Leonard is totally awesome because his job everyday is just to figure out new and better ways to help people :)

In his email to us he wrote:

Dear Adam & Patrick, Its long since you heard from me. I hope you are fine. Just to update you, the Marafa Project took off two weeks ago. The Contractor is working hard to complete the house by end of May or early June. Here are photos showing the progress of the construction works at the Site. Wishing you all the best and hoping to meet in June for the official opening. Yours Leonard

Attached to his email he gave us three photos of the construction efforts of the new boarding facility!!! I am sooo excited that it is actually happening!

Some of our friends from Kenya working on the plans for the Facility
(second to the right is our friend Reverend Mongie)

Big piles of rocks (supplies)

This is my favorite picture... Looks like the foundation of the facility!!!

On another note due to exchange rates and underestimates of the true cost of the boarding facility it seems that Kupenda needs to raise an additional $7,000.00 to complete the construction of the facility. To help Kupenda in this effort we are planning to hold a car wash at Grace Fellowship Church. We are also trying to think of some other ideas to raise the additional needed money. We are sure we will be able to raise the money. When doing such a good thing as building this facility no doubt that money will be raised in time :)

(We were told that the money is needed sometime early June.)

-Pattt
LoveLife!