Volunteering in Uganda

Dear friends,




This year I plan on volunteering in Uganda with Christian Upliftment Nursery&Primary School. I am asking for your help, to help me get there! Funds raised will go towards helping pay for my flight and all extra donations will go towards the school. I will either be staying at a local hostel only a few minutes away from the school, or with a local family. One of the reasons I want to get back to Uganda is of course to see the beautiful kids! To say I miss them would be an understatement. While seeing the kids will be great, there is also a ton of work to do. I hope you will take the time to continue reading some of the things I will be doing in Uganda and how I can be of use to the school.

ESCAPE scholarships

We have just launched our ESCAPE scholarship program. ESCAPE stands for Educating Students Can Alleviate Poverty Everywhere. This program will send our primary seven students who pass their final exam to secondary schools. This is our newest project and requires a lot of work. This will include visiting secondary schools to collect information about their curriculum, requirements, and fees. We will also be interviewing all of our candidates to learn more about them and their home life, and how a scholarship would benefit them. Because secondary school fees are substantially higher in Uganda, a sponsorship program such as the one we run at the school would not work. Therefore, we would like to set up a weekend youth development and recreational centre(more below) where our primary six and seven students would come on the weekend to make jewellery and other products which will be sold. All the benefits from their sales will go into their scholarship fund.

www.escapesholarships.blogspot.com



Item Donations:

I will be using all of my luggage for donations, and my carry on for my own belongings. I also hope to be able to pay to take a few extra pieces of luggage to carry on more donations. Donations I will be bringing for the school will include medical supplies, school supplies, children's books, and other needed items. Please stay tuned for a list of item donations you can donate. For sponsor who make a donation towards my volunteer fund, I am also giving you the opportunity to send me a package for your sponsor child which I will deliver. The limit is one medium sized school bag stuffed.

Clinic& Medical Check Ups:

Thanks to a donor, we are now able to hire a school nurse to come and visit the school a few times a week. Another sponsor has also donated a big box full of medication! In total we have over 75 pounds of medication for Uganda. My role in this will be to help the nurse conduct her first medical check up- on all of our students! We also plan on doing a 'medical outreach' on the streets of Kampala. Children as young as one years old are forced to beg on the street for a few cents a day. Most of these children are from Northern Uganda and the Karamojong tribe. Discrimination for these two groups runs rampant in Uganda as they are seen as lower class. Our school has always proudly served displaced children from Northern Uganda, and we now have one Karamojong girl, who was rescued directly from the streets. Life for these ethnic groups has always been difficult, but living on the streets brings on a new set of problems. I hope that we can do something long term for these street children and mothers in the near future, but right now they can use any help they can get. Small things such as an eye infection, often turn into serious long term problems as they are left untreated. To think that a few eyedrops can prevent a child from possibly going blind, is the reason why I have promised myself that we will be holding a medical outreach in Kampala!(More on the Karamojong below).

The Karamojong

As I mentioned in the above paragraph, we plan on holding a medical outreach for street children, the majority of whom belong to the Karamojong tribe. The Karamojong tribe are known to be 'the most backwards people in Uganda.' They value cattle and carry AK47s, and their traditions and customs are very different to other tribes in Uganda, making them outcastes. The Karamojong also suffer from the highest rate of poverty and childhood malnutrition in the entire country. The illiteracy rate is a staggering 82%! Because of these circumstances, children often flee to the Kampala in search of a better life. When they arrive, they are faced with a new set of problems and when they turn to aid organizations dedicated to helping children, many find out that these organization do not help Karmojong children. Many schools do not accept Karamojong children, and thus the cycle of poverty follows these children from their old homelands to the streets of Kampala. Meet Angela Florence, a young vibrant but shy Karamojong girl. She was rescued by CUS after the director found her begging on the streets. This poor girl has suffered from severe abuse from people who were suppose to take care of her. She was sick when she was found, unloved, and her only possession was the tattered clothing on her back.



But she is not a savage, she is not stupid, and she is not cruel. She is the opposite of every evil word people spew about the Karamojong. She is a warm loving girl. She is bright and sucks up any information given to her. Although she only received basic education in her early childhood, she is has already jumped two grade levels from when she first arrived. She is where she belongs, in school. But she is just one of the many deserving Karamojong street children who has received an opportunity to learn. On this trip, my plan is to get to know the street kids and Karamojong kids much better. I have always had a heart for street children, which grew not in Uganda but actually the Dominican Republic. I am no expert, but because of the work I did there, I believe I am more prepared to work in Uganda with street kids. My mission will be to get to know the kids, not just their names and ages- but really get to know them. About their homeland, aspirations and dreams. A great accomplishment will be to put more Karamojong children in school. I truly believe education is the way out of poverty, and even just teaching these children to read and write would be a great accomplishment and benefit to them. There are so many more Angella's on the streets right now waiting to be rescued and given a chance.

Youth Development and Recreational Centre

On the weekends and during holidays, many of the children are left unsupervised and uncared for. This continues to be a very big problem, and has gained international attention because of the rise of child sacrifice in Uganda. Some witch doctors have made people believe that sacrificing a child is a way to become rich. Orphans, street children, and unsupervised youth are often targeted as they are easy to capture. Other problems such as child exploitation have always been a problem in the community. There has also been many incidents of the children caught stealing from people's gardens to ease their hunger pains.




The youth centre will be a place where the children can come on weekends and after school to receive tutoring, life skills, as well as play games and just have fun in a supervised and safe environment. We will also dedicate a few hours to teaching our primary six and seven students income generating skills such as bead making, sewing, and carpentry. All of their work will be sold, with all of the proceeds going to their scholarship fund which will provide them with the opportunity to go to secondary school and continue their studies.









Sponsorship Updates &Tutoring

All of the sponsorship updates are done by the school's principal, who also teaches a class and acts as the community social worker. I will take the opportunity to help get a lot of her work done, by doing detailed updates on each sponsor child and taking the time to talk to the children to learn a little more about them. One of my goals, is to also help the children with writing. Most of the students excel in Math, but when it comes to writing they have a lot of difficulties. With the writing age students(P.3-P.7) I will do some "english lessons" by reading stories and having the kids answer and ask questions about what they read, come up with alternate endings, and just work to really get their imaginations working on paper. My hope is that by helping them become more confident in their writing and reading, it will not only help them communicate with their sponsors better, but it will also bring up their marks in their english classes.

YOU Care

One of the best things the children receive through sponsorship, is learning someone cares about them. Many moments from my last trip will never leave my mind. I always cherished my own sponsor children, and excitedly told people about them like they were a newborn niece or nephew. I figured the children also cherished their sponsors but maybe in a different way- as a penpal far far away. This couldn't be further from the truth! Time after time while I was in Uganda, children would ask me about their sponsor, affectionately calling them "Aunty____." They would pose with big grins in pictures for me to give to their sponsors, and shake their head if the photo wasn't to their liking, because if they didn't like it their sponsor wouldn't! It was touching and they were certainly some of the cutest kids on the planet. But the magnitude of the situation started to hit me only after I truly got to know some of the children. Some of these children are orphans and some are severely abused at home. They may live with relatives, but by the way these people treat the children you couldn't possibly think they were in anyway related.

Many children are stigmatized because they are HIV+, and feel unloved. When we think of problems related to poverty, things like hunger, mud huts, dirty drinking water, may come to mind. We want to do everything we can to make sure children have food in their bellies and a warm bed to sleep in. I don't think we realize the one free thing we're giving them could maybe be the most important-love.







I am giving the opportunity to all sponsors to record a video clip for your sponsor child! You can record yourself with a digital camera or on the computer-if you have access to a camera please do so!

It doesn't have to be fancy, you can be in your pjs in front of your computer and just record a 10 second message like " Hi Denis, this is your sponsor Kate. I think about you all the time, I am so proud you are going to school. Love you lots!" If you want to make it longer and more creative, go for it!Maybe in front of your favourite tree, introduce your family members(don't forget pets!), and show the picture you have of your sponsor child.

You can help me accomplish the above projects by making a donation to my volunteer fund for any amount, or by sponsoring me for $35. When you sponsor me you will receive my personal newsletter, and have your name featured on my "volunteer shirt!" This shirt will be made to have all the names of all those who sponsor me, which I will wear in Uganda working at the school. You will also be entered into a raffle to win a $100 gift card to Bikini Village(because it's summer and everyone needs a new bathing suit)!


I currently have 4 people sponsoring me and need 50 more!




Interesting links


Child Sacrifice in Uganda

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8441813.stm

Karamojong Tribe:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6378969.stm