2020: Year in Review in Photos
Covid-19: Food and Water?
While the world is held hostage by this terrible virus, and children everywhere are told, “Just keep washing your hands!” the children of KCDO are wondering not only how to wash their hands without water, but also wondering how to get food, now that everyone is under quarantine.
The lack of running water is always a problem, but during this pandemic mothers and children are doing the best they can.
This young woman is using stockings as a mask.
One of the main difficulties that families are facing is the lack of food. Fortunately the Wonderland BookSavers Go Fund Me page funds sent to KCDO are enabling the community to purchase beans, rice and cooking oil.
This KCDO community leader is delivering sacks of food to the many villagers who are suffering starvation due to this pandemic.
Thank you so much to the many American donors who have enabled this supply of food.
Please keep remembering these children in your prayers. They are praying for you as well.
Piggery Pop-Up
The Covid-19 pandemic has reached Uganda, and KCDO offices are being closed; the piggery is being temporarily disbanded. Fortunately, notwithstanding the pandemic, the KCDO piggery is providing frontline micro-economic opportunities for local women in the Lwengo District of Uganda.
As Jack Neighbor notes in a recent article in National Geographic, “Women have long been underestimated and underutilized in many societies, including across Africa. Now, through hard work, global commitments, and localized training initiatives, women entrepreneurs are making their mark on the economies of southern Africa.”
To Neighbor’s point, both the piggery and KCDO are using this opportunity to provide 20 local women with booster grants and materials to start their own businesses. KCDO has been teaching entrepreneurial skills for the past year. The women graduates are now provided with the tools for success.
Willy writes, “Am happy to inform you that today, Saturday, we have been able to support 20 women with income generating projects to assist them in these trying moments. 10 women got pigs, animal feed and booster feeds to start their own piggery schemes at the household level. Others have got retail shops items like merchandise goods, drums for brewery, seedlings, fertilizers since its planting season, among others.”
And he says,
“We are grateful to Wonderland BookSavers and the team who helped us start the piggery project that is supporting other small businesses for rural poor women in Kyamaganda community and Lwengo District.”
This is a great example of successful micro-entrepreneurship, which started with a fund-raising pool party in the USA and 8 months later concludes with financial independence for 20 women and their families in Uganda.
“Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.” Romans 12:10
Community Helps Renovate House for Vulnerable Children
Yesterday we had mobilized the youth and community people after the
childrens party to come on Saturday and we help the household with eleven orphaned children. The children stay with old grandmother aged 69 years. The oldest girl is 12 years and the youngest is 8 years. The house they stay in is made up of mud and wattles. The house is in sorry state.
Today we got a good Samaritan who gave us bricks and they have been carried to the site and the foundation was dug. The rural people have participated and we hope by the end of January it will be ready for use. The only challenge is manufactured materials that are not available in the community but the will to make it so is available.
The kitchen is also worrying and the household was chancefully supported
with T-shirts and some shoes.
Local Principals Expand School Libraries
Donations of books, soccer balls and T-shirts were recently received by the principals from local schools in the Kyamaganda community. Donations were sent by US-Africa Children’s Fellowship and Wonderland BookSavers.
These boxes of books and school supplies have traveled from the US to Zimbabwe and then, with great difficulty, to the Kyamaganda Community Development Organization, where they are being sorted so that they can be shared between the KCDO library and local schools.
KCDO students are currently on school holiday. When they return, they will be greeted by many new books, both textbooks and children’s fiction. The soccer balls will be the best surprise!
T-Shirts Shared with Children
Pictured here are some of the children who acquired clothes from the
boxes we received from the distribution center, established by Wonderland BookSavers and US-Africa Children’s Fellowship in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.
Sadly all of these children are from Kiwangala Health centre IV and are HIV and AIDS positive children. They stay with older care takers and the majority do not attend school because of school fees challenges.
Out of 50 children in the picture only 18 have shoes and some have torn clothes because of weak financial stand. This is why we have submitted sponsorship proposal for future finding of partners who can adopt some of these children for Sponsorships. Additionally, if you would like to help these children, no funds needed, please see our list of much needed goods, Donate.
As resources allow, these children will all participate in the children’s Christmas party in mid-December.