World Vision sponsorship changed my life
Mbainaissem Mardi is a person who believes in giving back. This former sponsored child is using his hard earned money to support his family and has plans to build a school for orphans.
Mbainaissem Mardi, is a former sponsored boy in the Doba ACT Development Project, in southern Chad. He is the eighth child of ten. His father died in 1990. His mother Rebecca, a housewife, strives hard to take care of her ten children. She sells local produce at the market.
“I … remember when our church made an announcement that World Vision is planning to sponsor orphans and vulnerable children of our city,” says Mardi. “We went the next day with my mum to our school compound where the registration is done. You cannot imagine what our joy was when I heard them calling my name to go forwards and have a picture of me taken… It was the best day of my life,” Mardi said.
The Doba ACT Development project runs three schools (two primary and one secondary) with a total of 950 children attending. There is also a women’s training centre, a conference centre, a cereal bank and a health centre.
Mardi remembers the benefits of child sponsorship. “Once every year, we were provided with clothes,” he remembers; “we had free medical care and our school conditions have improved with the construction of classrooms and provision of textbooks to the school.”
Mardi completed his primary studies at the Doba school and went to high school at the Walter Ganz School, and in 2002 was sent to the Bebedjia Catholic High School.
“One of the experiences that marked me very much is related to sickness. I just joined the secondary school when I was hit by a serious disease and was admitted at the hospital for two weeks. I nearly passed away if World Vision did not exist in my life. I survived because the organization took total charge of my medical fees… my mother is a widow and cannot afford to pay the medical fees and also the other expenses such as food and medical prescription during my time at the hospital. I am very grateful to World Vision for that assistance,” explains Mbainaissem Mardi
After completing high school and working briefly at a school, he was send to teacher’s college in Ndjamena. “Since 2007, I am now a Science Teacher at my former school, Walter Ganz’s… I am happy that it gives me a more stable professional situation because I am a qualified teacher,” Mardi said.
He lives now in the family plot with his mother, his sister and her five children, and a number of relatives
“Thanks to sponsorship, I am now able to help my mother to take care of our family,” said Mardi. “I am receiving enough money from my job as a teacher. I … started a brick making business and this is really profitable for me because within a year, I am able to buy a motorcycle and build a two-room house in the family compound. Even now that we are 15 people living in the family yard, we can have at least one meal every day. That is not possible for many people here in Doba,” he said.
He also has the benefit of eight ha of land planted with mango trees his father has left for them as a heritage. He plans to return to the Teacher Training College to further his education, and hopes to get married soon. He also dreams of creating an orphanage and a school in the family compound.
“As an orphan, I better understand the ordeal of orphans and [want to] provide them with a place where they can live and study and [be] taken care of… I hope to get somebody who can help me with this project because no child has chosen deliberately to be an orphan. I am really thankful to World Vision,” Mardi adds.