In the best week of our appeal so far, the cheque towards building Harrogate House 2 has raised our overall total to £4,806.

Our goal of £25,000 is looking more and more likely each week and, with your help, we can hit our target by the start of the summer.

In the past fortnight, the appeal has been bolstered by other superb donations of £500 from the Rose Jeffries Memorial Fund, almost £400 collected by former Soroptimists president Christabel England, a £100 online pledge from Marilyn Mitchell and equally-vital contributions of smaller cheques from caring residents across the Harrogate district.

Your donations will go directly towards building an infants' home in Mangochi – phase two of an ambitious rebuilding project – for orphans between the ages of two and five whose parents have died or abandoned them.

The home will continue the work of the original Harrogate House, part of the Open Arms project, which Harrogate Advertiser readers helped fund in 2003.

Mangochi is located almost 150 miles north of Blantyre, and the need for more child care here arose when the Malawi Children's Village burned down last year. The 23 babies were all saved, but most were hospitalised with smoke inhalation.

Open Arms had already agreed to lease the site and have since spent the last three months trying to rebuild the home. Volunteers are hoping to have the work completed by June.

The first phase of this site will include accommodation for 40 babies and, as long as we are able to raise the £25,000 we need, the second phase of the project will be started on time, with a view to completing the house in 2010 ready for when the babies turn two years old.

Once they turn five years old, staff try to return them to family members in their original villages and towns. If this is not possible, the children are then put into foster care.

Harrogate House and the proposed Harrogate House 2 are the visions of former Harrogate resident Neville Bevis, who established the original orphanage with his late wife Rosemarie in 1999.

Mr Bevis said: "It was for a long time the vision of the late Rosemarie to see Open Arms 2 developed further north in the country.

"Mangochi is an area of Malawi that has a particularly high incidence of HIV/AIDS and consequently a burgeoning orphan problem."

The infants' home is just one part of the work of the Open Arms volunteers, who have a policy to follow up on the children that have been returned to their extended families.

Senior matron Rose Phiri is responsible for an outreach program where the progress of around 100 children has been or is being monitored.

Each child on discharge from the infants' home is visited on a monthly basis unless there is genuine reason for concern in which case they will be visited more often.

The home does not attempt to influence the decision of the extended family as to whether they can or cannot accommodate the child.

Mrs Phiri travels with a comprehensive medical kit and interventions are made when necessary. It might be that a child has to be brought back to the special nutrition unit at our local hospital for up to three months.

On some occasions it is necessary for the child to be withdrawn from the family and brought back to Harrogate House.

Currently there are five such children in the House. They may have been neglected, there might have been further death in the family, or sometimes it appears they were not wanted and left to starve.

Once they have been brought back to Harrogate House they are rarely if ever visited again by their families.

Where possible Open Arms will then pay fees to local nursery schools where staff are given an opportunity to get an independent view of the child's progress.

Where there are no schools, Mr Bevis and Harrogate House staff have become involved in creating them and have already built four schools and contributed towards a fifth.

Leeds-based DePuy International and Harrogate's Ashville College have been instrumental in providing funding for three of these and a small charity run by a prominent British broadcaster funded the other.

A valuable annual contribution to the outreach program is the assembling of 100 starter packs. This is a combination of fertilizers, urea, maize seed and bean seed. It enables the extended families of the orphans to grow extra food, rather than relying solely on donations.

• For more information, news and pictures about our Raise the Roof appeal, visit our website.
Donations can be made by cheque, payable to Open Arms Malawi. Donations can be sent to Harrogate House 2 Appeal, Spout House, Church Hill, North Rigton, LS17 0DB. To donate online, visit their Just Giving website.