Bethlehem is a children's home in Lubumbashi, in the south of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Fifty children live there. They are fed, they are sent to school, and they are looked after by people who love them. At night, most of them lie down on a concrete floor.
A floor is cold, and through the rainy season it stays damp. Children who sleep on one wake up stiff, they catch whatever is going around faster, and they carry that tiredness into the classroom the next morning. It is the kind of problem that is easy to overlook from far away and impossible to ignore once you have stood in the room.
A bed here is a simple thing. A foam mattress, a sheet, a blanket, and a mosquito net. Bought from suppliers in Lubumbashi, the whole set comes to about one hundred dollars. That is the entire ask: one hundred dollars, one child, off the floor.
Fifty children, fifty beds, five thousand dollars by the thirty first of October. Our team in Lubumbashi does the buying and the delivering, so your gift goes into mattresses rather than into shipping containers.
If you can cover a whole bed, cover one. If you can only cover part of one, give that, and someone else will cover the rest. Every amount goes to the same place.