Child's i Foundation - we make families not orphans

Supporters are always asking us what happens besides what is shown on our videos. We thought we’d share with you a month in the life of…Child’s i.

We rely on the time, love and money of all our Supporters around the globe and all this is down to you…

• Our two oldest boys who go to Nursery received excellent school reports – so proud!


Our boys with their reports

• We welcomed our lovely new media volunteer Emanuella Lorenzore to our team who will be staying with us for three months.
• Our Superhero Chairman David Tait set off to the Himalayas to summit Everest for the 4th time as well as establishing a new route on L’hotse, the 4th highest mountain in the World with Sissel Smaller and Reidun Jebsen.
• We held an all staff meeting with all the carers and we all agreed on what is acceptable behaviour and unacceptable behaviour and translated it into Lugandan.
• We held our second Adoption Panel made up of Kampala Probation Service, Families For Children and Child’s i Foundation. They approved three parents and we are awaiting the final decision from the independent expert.
• We welcomed Martha Parsons, a news journalist who is out here volunteering for six months co-ordinating our media campaign to promote adoption in Uganda.
• We went and checked up on one of our little ones who we placed back with his grandmother and very happy to report he is very happy and healthy.
• We traced the family of one of our little princesses and safely returned her back to her family after staying with us for three months and they very kindly gave us a chicken to say thank you.
• With the assistance of the Rwandan High Commission, we traced the extended family of a mother and her beautiful baby in Rwanda. Seeing their faces being reunited with their family makes it all worth it.


Home Sweet Home

• We donated a sewing machine from Patricia Karugaba to a wonderful womens group in Bwaise who make the most amazing dresses and toy animals. If you would like to buy a special gift and help the women look after their children visit the amazing website set up by Emma Scullion http://awamu.wordpress.com/
• We launched our brand spanking new website to promote adoption in Uganda. Thanks a million to Martha for co-ordinating it and @anu for giving up his Easter break to build it for us. Check it out and spread the love: http://www.ugandansadopt.ug.
• We produced brilliant promotional material to hand out to prospective adoptive parents designed by supporter Becci Buckley.
• We welcomed a new mother and her little baby boy who we are looking after until she gets back on her feet. She comes in everyday and decided she wants to sell clothes to become independent. We are placing her with a partner organisation to help her realise her dreams.
• The amazing team from Sadolin Paint came and ‘coloured our world’ by revamping our nursery with the help of our boys for free!
  

  Sadolin Painters

• We had to send the big guns from G4 Security to rescue Mary Blackwell and our babies stuck during the riots. Thank you so much to Will Geddes from the ICP Group for providing us protection throughtout the Walk To Work protests.
• Grace and Rose from Sight Savers came to our home and gave all our children eye test.
• We celebrated our first birthday and volunteer Sarah Kenyon organised a wonderful birthday party to celebrate the 49 children who have been cared for and placed into families.
• Heather from British Airways came to visit us and bought us a suitcase of goodies.
• Barbara from Dominion Petroleum came to visit us and meet our babies they help to support.
• We welcomed our AFiD volunteer Stella Ogunleye who is our new volunteer to help us with our operations and finance.
• We celebrated the first birthday of Baby Joey who thanks to Child’s i Supporters went for life saving heart surgery in August and celebrating his birthday was a very happy day. Thank you all.


Joey's 1st Birthday

• We resettled a little boy after one month with the help of Slum Aid who are assisting his mother to set up a small business.
• We placed our of our little girls with a new family. She now has a Mummy and two older sisters who adore her. Please take a look at our video of her going to a family – we love a happy ending!
• Supporter Melinda McCheyne had a birthday party and very generously asked her guest to donate to us instead of buying her a present.
• We found a wonderful new family for one of our little lads who spent four months with us after being abandoned in church.


Another Happy Family

• We finally met in person Jenny Paine who has been helping us with our UFU fanpage and her friend Diana Weston who came out with bags of goodies and also gave us money to buy new sofas for our home.
• Our management team had an assortment of ailments including pneumonia, giardia and an amoeba…nice.
• Lucy went back to the UK and attended a Trustee Meeting and we warmly welcomed David Emin, Director of Advertising of the Mirror Group to our Board of Trustees.
• We had an intruder at the Home who was swiftly intercepted by our wonderful nightguard Tom.
• We welcomed a tiny 5 day old baby boy to our family who needed a lot of feeding up but he’s over 3kg’s now!


Another little arrival to our home

• Our amazing volunteer designer Katherine Armstrong designed a brilliant two page promotional flyer and a flyer outlining the work of our charity.
• Two of our children started walking!
• The nurses from Mengo Hospital came to our centre to immunise all our babies.
• We had a great meeting with advocacy group ANPPCAN Uganda (African Network for the Prevention and Protection against Child Abuse and Neglect) who have agreed to partner with us to promote and advocate adoption in Uganda.
• One of our little ladies had to go for a successful operation on her belly button before we can return her back to her extended family.
• We went to The Surgery with 14 of our babies for a variety of ailments including admission assessments, malaria and lab tests. We want to say a thank you to Dr Stockley who gives us free consultations and we pay for lab tests and drugs. He is the local celebrity after a cameo role in the film ‘The Last King of Scotland’.
• We had to rescue three siblings and admit them into our care due to Child Protection concerns.
• We said a sad goodbye to Lynn Waters who came out and assisted our vulnerable mothers setting up small businesses including a hairdressing salon, knitting, candle making and a cold drinks business. Thanks to Lynn and our prevention team nine women have been set up in business and we look forward to seeing their endeavours flourish over the next year.


New Business

• We said a very sad farewell to Jennifer Johnson who has been our Operations Manager for nearly a year and pulled off miracles and mastered accounting, payroll and mouse traps as well as running the day to day operations. We miss you.
• We said goodbye to Josie Gallo our brilliant Media Volunteer who not only produced video updates for us but also produced promotional videos for Elizabeth House and Send a Cow Uganda and Rebecca Gibson who has been sharing her fundraising expertise with us and came out to see firsthand the work we do and help us run our fundraising from Uganda.
• We finalised with the VSO our new General Manager Anita Frayling who will be joining us in June for 24 months to manage our project.
• Our Social Workers completed 30 home visits to check up on children placed with families including four overnight visits and travelled over 2000km’s.

We couldn’t do this without you. Thank you x