Shanty Town Challenge

I attempted to publish a posting about Shanty Town Challenge about a month ago - before it had actually happened - but that went horribly wrong - so I'll try again.
Before I tell you about the event I'll tell you a little about the motivation behind it. Over this past few months a group who now call themselves The Poverty Action Team have been meeting at our church. Our concern has been to raise the profile of issues relating to world poverty in the minds and hearts of our congregation, to ask people to critically examine their lifestyle in the light of the inequalities which exist and to engage in practical projects which will have some impact on the needy situations which come to our attention.
One of the people who meet in this group (Ruth) spent much of her summer working in an orphanage in a slum area outside Nairobi and came back with some horrific stories about the conditions in which these children were living. 70 orphans living in a space much smaller than an average western home with no regular running water and sewage running in the street. The lady who runs the orphanage has been given land on which she can build a new orphanage and school but has no money to do the building. Ruth has come home determined to raise the funds to build the new orphanage. That's where Shanty Town Challenge comes in. We wanted to do something which would be educational but also raise some funds for Ruth's project.
Some of you may be familiar with the TV programme Scrap Heap Challenge where 2 teams of engineers compete to build a machine from scrap - well I guess that formed part of our inspiration! We had 10 teams - all of whom had to raise some sponsorship - build shanty dwellings. We gathered up scrap materials from a number of building sites and divided it into 10 piles. We also supplied a hammer, a blunt saw, and a few nails. The buildings which were created were quite amazing - and everyone who built really entered into the spirit of the thing. At the end all of the buildings were judged - which included a weather proof test (conducted by the fire service) - with the teams inside! I think that was probably the highlight of the evening!
Between the building and the judging we had dinner. That was an object lesson too. We drew 20% of the names out of a hat and gave them a western style meal - burgers, sausages, salad, bread rolls etc while the 80% got rice with a lentil sauce - a reflection of reality in the world. (Although I'm told 90/10 would be a more accurate reflection than 80/20) In a gesture which probably didn't reflect the world very accurately the westerners shared their surplus with the 'poor' - rather than just throwing it out!
We had a few other activities going on around the field too - the most popular of which was brick making with some clay which we obtained locally -see picture.
Hopefully the message registered with the 150 people who came along on the night. We also managed, between sponsorship and entry charges to raise approximately £1500. Ruth had already raised over £3000 from car boot sales and other activities so she is well on her way.
Did you like our toilet?
Maybe someone would like to pick up on this idea and run with it somewhere else!