Royal Visit for Charity

Posted on September 24, 2012 by Jane Kaye-Bailey

I am delighted to announce that The Butterfly Tree is to receive a visit by HRH The Princess Royal, during her forthcoming visit to Zambia, as part of Her Majesty The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations. This is a great honour for both the charity and Mukuni Village. Working closely with the British High Commissioner and The Princess’s secretary the arrangements have been finalised and everyone is looking forward to this auspicious occasion. Today I will be travelling to Zambia to make the final preparations for the visit for this exciting event. Accompanying me will be Emma Soames, a trustee of Saga Charitable Trust; Saga is one of the charity’s major donors.

Royal Visit for Charity: Mukuni Basic School

After a welcome from Chief Mukuni, HRH will arrive at the school where she will be greeted by some 1500 school children. The programme will include seeing a classroom in action, our special education unit and the orphan sponsorship programme. The choir and traditional dancers will perform and orphans will recite a poem and explain how our sponsorship has helped gain a place at high school and subsequently teacher’s training college. The Princess will unveil a plaque before proceeding to Mukuni Health Centre to learn about our health projects, which include a maternity clinic and women’s shelter, malaria and HIV/AIDS prevention programmes and treatment for sick children.

Cyclothon UK: Mike Kaye, James Blackburn, Nigel Birch & Richard Harrison

This will complete an incredible month for The Butterfly Tree. We had great success at Cylcothon UK when Mike Kaye, Nigel Birch, James Blackburn and Richard Harrison spent 12 gruelling hours cycling round the Brands Hatch Circuit. Prana Zambia held an event for Yoga Aid, a global initiative to raise funds for grass roots projects. Our Canadian representatives have a new concept to raise funds to purchase mosquito nets, as a result we are now able to distribute nets in the Sekute Chiefdom. By the end of the year, with Saga’s funding, every household in the Mukuni Chiefdom with have three mosquito nets.

Jacob, a volunteer for the charity, distributing mosquito nets

This week will also see the announcement of the UK Travel Mole Web Awards 2012. We have been short listed for the Best Responsible Tourism site and Miranda de Freston of Morphity, our trustee and web designer will attend the event in London. We will be posting a report and photos of the Royal visit later this month.

UK TravelMole Web Awards 2012

Posted on September 17, 2012 by Jane Kaye-Bailey

We are excited to announce that The Butterfly Tree website has been shortlisted in the UK TravelMole Web Awards of 2012. This is the ninth year of the UK TravelMole Web Awards and our site was selected from a record-setting number of entries.

TravelMole.com and TravelMole.TV publishes 15 eNewsletters and broadcasts hundreds of videos to over 450,000 travel & tourism industry professional registered members and subscribers, as well as 30 million consumers in 132 countries. This includes the highly acclaimed VISION on Sustainable Tourism publication.

The awards presentation to the winning websites will be held on September 26th at the Doubletree by Hilton London.

Best Responsible Tourism Site

This was our application:

The volunteer opportunities described on the website have attracted people from all walks of life coming from North America, Asia, Australia and Europe. Every month doctors, nurses, teachers and students provide additional ‘hands on’ assistance at the schools and clinics supported by The Butterfly Tree.

The entire website has been designed, developed and donated by Miranda de Freston of Morphity Ltd, who is a trustee of the charity. Alongside Miranda, Jane Kaye-Bailey, the founder, manages the ongoing content for the website to ensure regular updates for readers and subscribers on the extensive charity’s activities.

The website highlights the extensive work that has been done in the local communities we work in, promotes philanthropic travel, volunteering and fundraising opportunities.

Through our website we actively promote philanthropic travel and offer volunteering opportunities on a range of projects. This promotion and extensive optimisation of the website has attracted hundreds of groups, corporate and individuals from around the world.

The website has been instrumental in drawing worldwide donors, generally exposing The Butterfly Tree charity and is one of the main reasons people initially become inspired to get involved.

Funding for Orphans

Posted on September 7, 2012 by Jane Kaye-Bailey

All our work revolves around the thousands of children left orphaned through the HIV and AIDS pandemic. There is so much need that prioritizing is paramount and often quite difficult to turn down requests. Up until now our policy has been to work only in rural villages, but when a family from London recently contacted me and said they would like to support Lubasi Orphanage in Livingstone I felt that we had to make an exception. Lubasi has over forty children and relies heavily on aid with a few sustainable income-generating activities. Julie Gottlieb and her family saw first-hand the need of these vulnerable children and aim to raise funds for The Butterfly Tree to support this project. Their initiative, ‘Pack a Pillow‘, provides items for the children. Sun International, Zambia has kindly donated the pillows and pillowcases.

Funding for orphans: twin brothers supported by The Butterfly tree

This month sees other fundraisers working hard to provide funds for the orphans in Zambia. Once again our team, ‘The Flying Butts’, namely Mike Kaye, Nigel Birch and James Blackburn with the addition of Richard Harrison, will be participating in Cyclothon UK, a twelve-hour endurance test cycling challenge around the Brands Hatch Circuit. The organisers, VULtd, headed by Victor Umbugu put a great deal of effort into making this a hugely successful day for both the participants and the charity beneficiaries. The event takes place on 13th September from 7am until 7pm, spectators are welcome.

Mike Kaye participating in Cyclothon UK 2011

Yoga Aid is a global challenge to raise funds for needy causes and will be held on 9th September when they aim to raise over $1,000,000. Events will be taking place in over 30 countries in five continents. Prana Zambia is hosting an event at the Victoria Falls and is donating the money to The Butterfly Tree. On another global matter Malby Maps, a new company that specialise in creating handmade and unique pieces of map artwork, greeting cards and stationary, soft furnishings, homeware, paperweights and doorstops, has generously offered to donate a percentage of their card sales to the charity.

Funds are used to house a widow with four orphans – just £400 with house a family

We are so grateful to all our donors, fundraisers and sponsors who have enabled us to reach out to orphans in three Chiefdoms in the Southern Province of Zambia. If you would like to sponsor an orphan or support one of our projects please contact jane@thebutterflytree.org.uk