Steve's Legacy to the Rural Poor
The 17th October 2015 marked the fifth anniversary of Derek Edward (Steve) Hallam's death.
Steve's last wish was for Rejoice to continue helping the rural poor of Chiang Mai province in a similar fashion. This has not been so easy without Steve's vast experience. However, with a seriously reduced staff but with the help of volunteers Rejoice endeavours to continue in the same manner as Steve would have liked.
At the time of Derek Edward Hallam's (aka Steve) death in 2010 it was very doubtful Rejoice would survive. However, thanks to the experience and enthusiasm of Gee and Arm, the 2 remaining staff, and the support of SDL, BCTFN, FRS (Friends of Rejoice Singapore) and other individual donors, Rejoice did survive and has been slowly evolving ever since. By working together with volunteer hospital health care workers, themselves HIV +ve, Rejoice has been able to reach out to the more remote, ethnically diverse communities especially close to the Myanmar border. Together with the health care workers, special meetings (get togethers) are held between people living with HIV; people from various ethnic communities meet each other for the first time and realise they are not alone in fighting HIV; community meetings aimed especially at youth; meetings in schools explaining reproductive health etc.
At the outset it was realised that a simple accounting and reporting system was necessary to quantify and store data from the increased activities. The files below show how we are computerising and collating the increasing amount of data. This is done routinely at the end of each month;
• The master file shows the Monthly Expenses for the previous 4 years in one small file.
• The clinics fileshows the medicines, formula milk and provisions for both ‘Core clinics ‘and ‘Home Care’ clinics for a given month.
• The School Scholarship children are all in one database file. Each child is hyper-linked to his/her individual PDF file
The latest Reports and Previous Newsletters can be accessed in 'The Archives' section or in the "Footer" section, where there are also links to photo albums, at the bottom of each page.
