KIDS FOR KIDS

CHAIRMAN'S REPORT

FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31ST MARCH 2012

The latest Annual Accounts are now available for you to read on line - and to print - (see right hand column).

Since the establishment of our own office in El Fasher, the regional capital of North Darfur, in March 2010, we have adopted a further nine communities in remote parts of rural Darfur. There are now 60 Kids for Kids villages where mothers know that they will not have to fear for their children's future in one of the most deprived areas of the world.

• The Kids for Kids' key project, our Goat Loan Project, is proving to be the most important life line for whole communities which, since the separation of South Sudan from Sudan, is facing soaring inflation. People cannot afford to feed their children. Our goats'milk is often their only source of protein, minerals and vitamins. It is proving to be vital in helping children to survive.

• Our Welcome Home Package for Internally Displaced People is enabling families to establish new lives in rural villages. This simple package, costing £500, ($782) links the incoming family from a camp, with a poor family in the village, and helps them to be incorporated in the life of the village. Kids for Kids is the only organisation providing the essentials to enable an IDPfamily to start supporting itself.

• The Kids for Kids new programme office in Darfur, is reinforcing the capacities of local communities, and avoiding the extra layers and costs of international NGOs. This means we have cut administrative costs and are able to spend the maximum to help families in such desperate need.

• Water handpumps once again are being installed. We have been able to fund the repairs of handpumps, left idle since the start of the violence because of the lack of expertise and available funds to repair them.

• Kids for Kids' Project Implementation Manual captures lessons of our innovative approach to projects.

• Continued use of volunteers and sponsorship enables administrative costs to remain low, despite soaring inflation.

• The Drawn....to Darfur art, and heart, project attracted celebrity supporters at the highest level, including HRH The Prince of Wales, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and over 80 stars of screen and stage. This unique campaign has now raised over £70,000 for the children of Darfur. The book Drawn...2 Darfur continues to sell well.

• Increasing problems of access to Darfur, whilst so far not impinging on the amount of help we have been able to provide, and a continuing slide in the level of donations from individuals, has lead to the Trustees making continengency plans which includes one year's reserves policy to enable us to fulfill our programme plans, already identified for the next five years. In the light of increasing, and troubling, needs in Darfur plans are already in place to expand our project work and to underwrite the charity's operations and commitments to the children of Darfur.

New projects plans - include kindergartens, the first of which will be at Abu Nahla, a village we adopted in 2010, new midwife training school in Mellit to give the most remote villages access to midwives, and women's literacy programme in all our villages. Plus the adoption of new villages as funds allow.

The training of village midwives remains a key priority with funds required to provide 40 new midwives every 14 months. A new six year Project for the planting and establishment of 15 community forests in remote regions.