Spotlight on : Express Your Dreams Essay Winners

We've received some great pictures from Muranga Child Rescue Center in Kenya. Muranga is home to John Ngugi, one of our Express Your Dreams Essay and Art Winners. In addition to his prize from LittleDrops, John was also blessed with several gifts from the home, including a new bicycle. John was quite excited and grateful for his presents and is shown enjoying them with the other children.

More about Express Your Dreams:

Express Your Dreams is an online Essay and Art competition for the orphans LittleDrops support. It is aimed at providing orphans an opportunity to express their dreams and share their view of the world they live in. Our contestants are keeping their dreams big: aspiring to be doctors, pilots, engineers, and world changers. They spoke about issues dear to their heart and their countries. This bold initiative encouraged the public to get involved by rating essays online and further provided them an opportunity to donate to LittleDrops. In our first cycle of Express Your Dreams (February 15th- April 15th, 2009), we had 200 entries from children in 24 orphanages across 6 countries.

The Winners are as follows:

Primary: (Ages 3-5)

Topic: Illustrate your favorite dream using any art medium

Winners:

Godson Twumasi-http://tinyurl.com/GodsonTwumasi

John Ngugi- http://tinyurl.com/JohnNgugi

Secondary: (Ages 6-11)

Topics:

1) Who is your favorite character in a book you read, and why?

2) If you could be anyone in the world, who would you like to grow up to be?

Winners

Asmin Nekesa- http://tinyurl.com/AsminNekesa

Samuel Wanyoike- http://tinyurl.com/SamuelWanyoike

Post Secondary (Ages 12+)

Topics:

1) Which historical figure is your role model, and what ways do you wish to emulate him/her to make a change in this world?
2) What is your favorite novel, and how has it changed your perspective of the world?
3) What is your biggest passion, and in what ways will it help you shape the world?

Winners

Joseph Ndirangu- http://tinyurl.com/JosephNdirangu

Teresia Wanjiku- http://tinyurl.com/TeresiaWanjiku

Media Coverage of LittleDrops!

LittleDrops has been in the news lately. Check out this great article about the inception and growth of LittleDrops.

Here's an excerpt

"Charles Duze (pronounced d—oázay) could not believe his eyes: Children just like him - some even younger - rifling through trashcans behind his high school cafeteria, lucky-dipping for food! Charles was enrolled at Federal Government College, Enugu, in Eastern Nigeria.

Long after Nigeria's Civil War ended, early in the '70s, 'Coal City' still bore scars of the internecine feud that left many families in tatters. A generation later, their inheritors were yet to recover lost grounds.

"Seeing this, day after day, unlocked something in me," Charles recalls. It triggered an epiphany. "That was when I developed a real understanding and grew a passion for the plight of orphans." There had been previous encounters pointing him to his calling. It's all coming back as memories of his parents taking him on visits to orphanages and motherless babies' homes in Benin City, tucked away in Nigeria's Midwest, where he spent part of his childhood. On his own, he continued the pilgrimages to orphanages in Enugu.

After leaving Nigeria for the United States, Charles completed both first and second degrees against all odds and landed a job with Microsoft in Seattle, Washington. He thought of waiting to become wealthy to start a non-profit, but reckoned, "unless I win the lottery, becoming wealthy is way in the future for me!"

But his calling couldn't wait."....

View the rest of the article written for The Guardian at:

http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/sunday_magazine/article02//indexn3_html?pdate=201209&ptitle=For%20African%20Orphans,%20%20Little%20Drop%20Of%20Mercies&cpdate=241209