FOR almost two years Wendy Shaffer has been helping to care for a small child thousands of miles away in Africa. But a few weeks ago, in an emotional meeting, Wendy came face to face with four-year-old Melesech Bekele, when she travelled to Ethiopia with a group of other sponsors. Last night Wendy, of Stoneycroft Court, Foxholes Road, Horwich, was featured on Granada Tonight, interviewed before making the momentous journey.

Tonight part two of her story will be told when the cameras follow her to Africa.

Wendy, mother of a four-year-old, Leonie, has been sponsoring Melesech after responding to a magazine advert placed by World Vision, the overseas relief organisations.

Each month she sends £14 which pays for Melesech's clothes, medical treatment, helps her family buy feed for crops and also assists the community as a whole. When it is time for Melesech to start school part of the money will pay for her education.

"I receive a detailed report every year so I know exactly where the money is going," said Wendy. She was among a group of other World Vision child sponsors, including a woman from Darwen, who travelled to Northern Ethiopia in August to meet their 'children'.

None of them had met before but all were sponsoring a child in the Mesk Project in the Ansokia Valley. Wendy hopes to repeat the visit in five years to see further developments.

She went weighed down with paper, pens and pencils - many supplied by her husband's firm Bosal UK, who also gave £100 to the project.

Wendy said: "They don't really have anything, no running water, no electricity. The mother and father cannot speak English but the children are being taught at school.

"At the bottom of the hill is a plantation where they grow their crops. On the second visit we drove up the hillside in a four wheel truck and I asked Melesech if she would like a drive to the bottom of the hill. She had never been in a car before and didn't like it. She cried her eyes out all the way."

It is 10 years since the famine and Wendy says things are gradually getting better, but help is still needed.

Wendy will continue to keep in touch with the family through letters which she receives about every three months.

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