Emajõe Kool Project
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Thank you letter from School Directors (posted May 27, 2001)
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Photos of children and school (part 1)
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Photos of children and school (part 2)
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$2300 Donation made to Emajõe Kool Feb 13, 2000
February 7, 2000
We have been helping the handicapped children of Emajõe Kool in Tartu, Estonia for the past few years. This is the only school for handicapped children in all of Estonia. There are currently 96 children in the school. 30 are from Tartu and go home after school each day. The remainder stay at the school and go to their respective home either every or every other weekend.
There are 19 blind children at the school.
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The government of Estonia has been good about providing the basic necessities such as food for the children. What has been sadly lacking is extras for recreation, including physical recreation.
The United Church of God has been holding an annual Festival in Tartu, Estonia and has been paying special attention to these children. Three of the conference attendees work at Emajõe Kool. Last year conference-goers brought developmental toys that were donated to the school and took a dozen or so children on a nature hike. When seeing the children enjoying themselves so much on outdoor gym equipment, a collection was taken up to provide the children something similar at the school.
Immediately $980 was collected. Then another donation of
$1000 followed. 
While we wanted to construct a jungle gym and new swing sets on the school yard, we learned that the school sits near a historic wall going back to the days when Tartu was a principal city in the days of the Hanseatic League hundreds of years ago. In the next year or so archeological excavations are going to be done on the property, so we cannot construct anything outside, however, we still want to purchase some indoor equipment that will help the children. A treadmill was suggested along with other items such a keyboard for playing music and a CD player. We are going to purchase these items with the money donated.
The United Church of God is again holding it's annual meeting in Tartu from October 13-21 and attendees are once again going to be encouraged to bring a developmental toy as a gift. The children promised to perform Estonian music for one of the meetings!
Thanks for your support.
LifeNets