Launching ‘Vita Plenae Uganda’

 

Over the past couple of days I’ve had the joy and privilege of delivering 360Life training to a group of teachers, church leaders, community leaders, youth leaders etc who are all based in and around the Soroti region of Uganda.

One of the key outcomes was the launch of Vita Plenae Uganda, a Ugandan-registered organization that has been set up to deliver trauma healing and mental-health training inspired by and based on the 360Life training programme. How wonderful – to know that the VPU folks believe in 360Life so much that they want to find a way to get it out across the nation through a locally-registered vehicle.

The vision of VPU is to see ‘lives transformed through healing, identity and wholeness across Uganda’. Their mission statement is ‘to educate, equip and empower individuals and communities to discover their God-given identity and fullness of life (uzima) through trauma-informed healing, compassionate service, and holistic wellbeing’. NB uzima is Swahili for wholeness.

The main trio who are heading up VPU are Sylvia, Pastor Steve, and Augusten, and after the training we sat together and discussed the next steps for the organisation, as well as the bigger dreams, and the various steps to be taken towards those dreams. These plans include working with NGO staff serving vulnerable populations, church and community leaders, teachers and school counsellors, prisoners and prison officers, refugees and host communities, and survivors of gender-based violence. Big dreams and big plans, but there’s nothing wrong with that, and as they shared their ideas with the other participants at the training, there was a real buzz of excitement and buy-in from all.

360Life programme initially emerged from conversations with various folks in Uganda, and then Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia and beyond. But the first conversations were in Uganda, and so it felt very appropriate that the first ‘expansion’ of 360Life has also been in Uganda. My prayer is that we will also have iterations of 360Life in other countries, as other folks trained in the programme follow similar paths to the VPU team.

But for now, I’m grateful to Steve, Sylvia and Augusten for taking these first steps, and I pray that the journey ahead for them will bring healing and wholeness to many – individuals and communities alike – across the nation of Uganda. 

 

Cred Partner gathering – what a treat!

On Wednesday 13^th May, 9 of the 11 CRED partners gathered at central location in Nairobi to travel together to the Links Africa Hub in Embu district in the foothills of Mount Kenya for 3 days of fellowship, learning, building relationships, deepening friendships and journeying together.

Those who were there were (in no particular order): Kenyanito (from IDAK), Harriet (from Acholi projects), Pius (from GNPDR), Aaron (from Chisomo), Bee (from Ellilta), Joseph (from TVST), Alice (from Stepping Stones), Bishnu (from PSD Nepal), and Terry (from F4M). So, between them they represented Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Malawi, Nepal and Zimbabwe.

And what a wonderful time was had by all. There were sessions on AI and how to use it rather than just fear it; what makes a good partnership: both North-South and South-South; leadership qualities; and raising up the next generation. The high level of participation and discussion in all of the sessions was a good indication of just how much everyone was getting from the content of each session. Each of the partners also had opportunity to share about their own work, and it was great to hear the updates from everyone and see the passion for their work shining through as they spoke.

Some of the partners had met some of the other partners before, so the gathering was also about a time to catch up with each other. But for 5 of the participants, this was their first time of meeting any of the others face to face – previously there had been some zoom communications for some of them – and it was fab to see the conversations continuing over meals, and into the evening, as bonds were made and folks discussed various aspects of work, life, challenges, shared experiences, shared knowledge etc.

And of course, the other great benefit for all of the participants was just the time to be away in a quiet and relaxing environment, to be able to step back a bit from the day to day, to be served rather than always serving, to have a bit of pampering through delicious food and hospitality. Each of those present spends so much of their life giving and giving and giving to others – it was beautiful to be able to give them the space and the opportunity to receive.

As everyone travels back to their home, their family, their ministry – my prayer is that the blessings of these days will last long beyond the time taken to get home. May the learning, the partnerships, and the rejuvenation be shared with the teams of the different projects, and in so doing trickle down for the benefit of all.

 

Positive Life Kenya

 

First day in Kenya and I visited a ‘new-to-me’ project that is based in one of the informal / slum settlements on the outskirts of Nairobi. The organisation is called Positive Life Kenya (PLK) and was founded back in 2010 by a wonderful woman, Mary Wabwire, who continues to lead the organisation with wisdom and an unquenching passion for intervening into the situations that first touched her heart and led to the birth of PLK.

PLK’s focus is based around programmes that support vulnerable children, young people and families living in, and caught up in the cycle of poverty. They do all sorts of outreach programmes in the community, run a primary school for the local children, and have a vocational training centre for young people. They do a lot of work on life skills, empowering young single mothers, and community-based interventions around educating, informing, and advocating for the rights of all, but particularly women and girls. I’ll let you read more if you want to at https://positivelifekenya.org/

Whilst at PLK, two of the social work team took me on a home visit to one of the families that they are journeying with. The home that we visited was about 3m square. It had a tin roof, and the walls were crumbling as they had been damaged in the recent floods that affected lots of vulnerable communities in Nairobi. Pieces of cardboard were up against the walls, presumably to stop the mud from crumbling down onto the children as they slept. There was one bed in the room, which had most of the clothes piled up on it, and a gas cooker in the corner. A plastic stool was the only other bit of furniture.

The mum was at home with her youngest, a son who is just 2 months old. She also has 4 daughters, two of whom are at primary school and two of whom are secondary school age, but as we visited during the school day, I didn’t get to meet them.

Between the mum and the PLK staff, they shared her story with me, as this family has only actually been part of the PLK ‘family’ for about 3 months. Prior to that, the staff were aware of the family in the community, but they had never been called to get involved as mum seemed to be doing fine with her 4 girls.

But then she got pregnant with her fifth child, and this seemed to be something that she just couldn’t cope with. The thought of one more mouth to feed was too much, and the mum was seen to be oscillating between wanting to terminate the pregnancy, even at such a late stage, or ending her own life. As soon as the community leaders realised how much she was struggling, they asked the PLK outreach team to start engaging with the mum, which they did.

Through home visits, gifts of food for the family, many conversations, and just being there, the mum started to feel less alone, and the suicidal ideations ceased. She still was not sure that she wanted to keep the baby however, and was open to the idea of having baby adopted once born. The visits and support by PLK continued, and one day they went into the home to find that the mum had given birth (on her own, no-one to assist), and was lying on the floor holding a very young son. The PLK machine swung even more into action, and by the end of the day, the baby was clean and clothed, mum had had a wash and was feeding the baby, cloths and clothing had been washed, and food was on the table for the family.

Two days later, when the PLK staff member visited, it came up about the mum’s previous thoughts of giving the baby up for adoption. The mum looked up, smiled shyly at the staff member, hugged her son tightly, and said that he was going nowhere.

And so he is still with her, and it was a beautiful moment to be able to kneel down today next to the mum, hold out my finger for the baby boy to hold on to, and see the strong love from the mum shining down onto her son.

That visit was to just one family out of so many who live in dire poverty and struggle against so many odds just to keep going each day. The statistics are desperate: almost 8.5% of the global population live in extreme poverty, and the poverty rates in low-income countries are higher now than they were before the pandemic (according to World Bank). It can feel so overwhelming.

But thankfully, it seems to be a given that, where there is poverty, there are also people who want to do something to help. Not in a patronising, self-seeking way (although those people do exist), but in a quiet, self-effacing, humble way that is all about just trying to make life a bit better for others. Sometimes that’s being done in a formal way through organised systems and structures and programmes, other times its being done in an informal, helping your neighbour way.

Thank goodness for the likes of PLK, working quietly and tirelessly in communities across the world, making a difference, one family at a time. Showing God’s love in practical, caring ways, and bringing hope into the lives of folks who need it most.

What a wonderful way to start my visit to East Africa.

 

 

Acholi visit pt 2 – those we support

For a good few years now we have been supporting a number of young people through to attend mainstream education. Each one of the children chosen was nominated by members of the community, so none were chosen by us. And also, at the decision of the community, it was decided for each individual child whether we support 100% of their school fees, or just 75%, so requiring the parents to still contribute to the fees. There were a couple of reasons for this move – partly to enable the parents / guardians to have the dignity of still knowing that they were involved in their child’s education, and partly to ensure that those same took some responsibility for their child’s education.

As I say, this aspect was initiated by the community, and we as outside donors took no part in deciding who should or should not be on the 100% list and who on the 75% list. However, we did help set up a small table-top savings scheme in the community, to enable the parents to have a way to save up the money that would be required for the start of each term, and this has been very successful.

It has been so wonderful to see the progress of the children through school. And also to see the parents getting better at money management. Most of them don’t have regular income, and it seemed like there were always lots of instant reasons for instantly spending what they earned rather than managing to save anything. But over the years the parents and guardians have become pro’s at saving a little bit here, a little bit there, and this has extended to benefiting in other ways beyond just their child’s education.

In this blog I thought that I would just share simple profiles of the children that we support, in order to exemplify aspects of the background context with which the children are contending. Obviously, all are anonymised.

Of the 21 students that we support, only 1 lives with both parents, and 6 live with their own biological mother.

6 live with grandparents, and 1 lives with her biological aunt. In all cases, the mother is still alive, but for some reason has abandoned the children – sometimes due to mental health illness and inability to cope, sometimes in search of work, sometimes just run away in search of new life, and in case has found a new partner and that partner has refused to acknowledge any of the previous children so the mother has been forced to choose between children and new man – and chose the new man.

Of those who live with their own mother, all of them also have extended family living in the house also – either cousins, or nephews / nieces (ie grandchildren to their mother) or informally fostered children.

Three of the children that we support are total orphans (both parents died), and eight have been completely abandoned by their parents (but as far as we know, at least one parent is still alive). Of those eight, 5 live with extended family, and 3 live as part of families that are not biologically related. NB there is no formal fostering programme in Uganda, so in the case of these three, the families that takes them in will have to cover their costs with no support from outside.

The smallest household is 5 people across 2 generations, the largest is 16 people across 3 generations (mum, 7 children and 8 grandchildren), the average is 7 or 8 people. And for all these households, the number of people will vary at different times depending on all sorts of factors: a close friend or relative in urgent need of a place to shelter, someone from the rural village visiting the city for medical treatment, abandoned children being taken in etc.

The standard size house for all of these families is a single room tin structure approx. 4m x 3m. Inside there will be a bed in one corner, with a curtain across to create a bedroom. A number of family members will sleep together on the bed, and the rest will sleep on raffia-type mats on the floor, covered with blankets during the colder months. Not many will have mosquito nets.

There is no running water, and no electricity. Some have illegal hookups to power, some use a kerosene lamp at night, some have a small solar lamp, some just use whatever source of light they can find at the time (candle, phone etc). Cooking is done on charcoal – just one pot cooking at a time, no oven. Most of the time the cooking will be done outside, but in bad weather the stove will come inside, potentially filling the home with smoke. And if the stove is still hot in the evening, those sleeping on the floor must lie still and be careful not to roll against it. If the stove is left outside during the night it probably won’t be there in the morning.

Water is purchased from the nearest standpipe – could be up to 50m away, and carried back in jerrycans. Long-drop pit latrines are equally sporadically positioned around the community. All perishable food is purchased on a daily basis, as there are very few fridges in the community due to lack of electricity. Non-perishable foods (rice, posho, maize, sugar, salt, oil), are carefully stored to ensure that ants, mice or similar can’t get in.

Employment for the parents is, for the most part, temporary and unpredictable. Some sell food in the market, some work in the stone quarry. Some collect empty plastic bottles to sell to industrial buyers, some work as housemaids. Some go to construction sites looking for daily work, others try portering in the markets. It’s all very hit and miss on the whole.

And that is the context into which the Acholi Community that I visit is positioned, and from which the wonderful children and young people come that I have had the privilege of journeying with over the past years. Their resilience, their positivity, their determination to do better than previous generations is incredible, and I stand in awe of each of them.

They all refer to me as ‘mama Hellen’, and I feel so privileged to have such a title. To them I am not a total outsider, although nor am I by any means a total insider. But according to my Acholi family, I stand in the middle of that insider-outside spectrum, and it is a beautiful and honoured place to be.