Recently we had a a visit from the local television station KTN:

It is a fine Monday afternoon. Mille the volunteer from Denmark is working with siaka and David in the jewellery room. Veronica the teacher is busy with the older children in class. Usually she gives extra afternoon lessons to them. Nancy, Margaret, Lopez, Vivian and Mama Rhoda are busy in the next room sewing and making beads too. Caroline is in the office with Little Garby's guardian. She has come to see the progress of her grandchildren as she always does.

Caroline's phone rings and it is a strange number. The man says he is calling from standard newspaper and is wondering if it is possible to pay us a visit. I go like, "now?" And he says yes. I tell him that it is fine. Twenty minutes later I see a car from KTN Live show with their crew arrive. They have very big cameras and microphones. I panic, but calmly usher them into the office. The men introduce themselves and ask me if it is possible to do coverage on Shinners live on television. They say they are going round finding out what impact organizations run funded by groups from oversees have on the communities and if there are any volunteers, so that they interview them.

I took them round and explained everything we do in detail. They asked questions about how we managed to acquire the sewing machines, computers, pottery equipment. I talked about the team from Holland, how we met Peter the first time, then Adri. How we recruited the children and how Shinners came into being. They asked us how much we receive monthly and what we do with it. We showed them pictures of the children in secondary, Christmas pictures and who supports it, the children, the students from Holland and the reason why they came and the achievements we had. I talked about the chicken keeping, where they interviewed Veronica. They interviewed Siaka in jewellery making, David on pots and other volunteers like Lopez.I mentioned some of the people supporting us on volunteer basis, like Mille and Mathew and what exactly they do.

They asked me to mention some of our future plans and I talked about:

• buying a plot to cut costs and to expand the project.
• intention to start chicken keeping in bulk.
• open Shinners school on the plot.
• work with more women, empower them financially and use rights based approach. Teach them on rights to go to school and encourage their girls on the same, access health sectors, employment, be leaders and also to vote.

The challenges I talked about included lack of enough funds as our partners in Holland have run out of money. -I also mentioned culture and lack on the part of the government to support small organizations like Shinners. They were very impressed and this was aired live on television on Wednesday the same week.