Orphans Aid International in the Press

Aid worker hopeful of funding win
A tireless champion of orphans worldwide, Queenstown based Sue van Schreven is just back from India and Uganda with her heart set on launching her aid work in another impoverished country.
Mrs van Schreven’s Orphans Aid International, which operates orphanages and programmes in Romania, Russia, Nepal and India, has been shortlisted for a prestigious Grahame Maher Award, one of only two Kiwi finalists.
Public voting in the 27 nominated countries closes on October 21. Each country’s winner will then be judged as a finalist, with the winner taking away 100,000 pounds (NZ $198,000) to spend on a charity project that brings sustainable change.
Mrs van Schreven arrived home on Tuesday from Uganda, where she hopes to help the many aid organizations already working there and establish an Orphans Aid programme.
Her heart went out to the hundreds of abandoned and orphaned children she met during the past few weeks in India, where her organisation works, and Uganda, which has 2.7 million orphans.
“The needs are horrendous. There are elderly ladies in Uganda taking on nine or ten kids who have no family.” Most of the parents had died from Aids.
Mrs van Schreven would invest the prize money into a Ugandan programme, maybe a home to help the elderly care for the huge numbers of orphaned young.
“We need the capital and 100,000 pounds would go a long way. Food and buildings are so cheap there.”
She visited her Indian aid workers at a feeding programme on the Bhutan border where children were being trafficked.
“There are a lot of displaced, refugee people, it’s a highly volatile and dangerous area, people are trying to traffic children and products across the border.”
One woman returned every day trying to sell her three young daughters through a translator for $60 each.
A small boy vomiting for three days was refused hospital entry so the workers got him into private care. Orphans Aid hopes to place its own doctor on the border.
It was “a tremendous eye opener and quite distressing” for Mrs van Schrevens son Ben, 12, who travelled with her.
Kiwi camerawoman Jomine Neethling, who works for award-winning television documentary maker Rob Harley, followed Mrs van Schreven for two weeks filming material.
News of Mrs van Schreven being shortlisted arrived as she left Queenstown airport. “I had one day to get a video done and up on Youtube. The power went out and we did it with a generator roaring. There was one place that services 27 villages with broadband (in India).
To vote: go to Vodafone New Zealand Foundation Facebook page or visit www.orphansaidinternational.org