Together To Uganda

A couple of weeks ago, the brave souls of Beacon Community College (yes, the ones hit by the mammoth thunderstorm) came out in force for their second attempt at Together To Uganda. The organisers of the 2012 Olympics could have learnt a few lessons from this event – kids of all ages walked, skipped, hopped, jumped and crawled a mile (and very often more) to cover the 4012 miles from here to Kampala. This time the weather was on their side – see for yourself how the campaign went:

Together To Uganda – Beacon Community College

They say a journey starts with a single step – thanks to Together To Uganda, we’re much closer to our finishing point.

There are some days when I wonder what our incredible, dedicated Supporters will think of to do next to raise funds for our wonderful babies’ home. Jumping out of a plane? (Been there, done that!). Abseiling 450 feet down a monumental building – we still have 2 places left!  Cycling 2,800 miles in 31 days? Go, Julien!

Well, it is with pleasure that I would love to introduce Tate. This awesome young man swapped his simply gorgeous curls for a shaved head – and raised a brilliant £362.35 towards our campaign! What’s more, he is only 10 years old!

In an age when everyone tells us how bad kids are, and how wild they’re running, it’s humbling to hear Tate talking so eloquently and passionately about how he wants to help save the lives of orphans thousands of miles away. Just think, if all the kids his age we know followed his lead, we’d be off to Uganda in no time.

Watch for yourself here – and prepare to shed a proud tear! If you want to sponsor him please go to http://www.justgiving.com/tatesdayofshearmadness

If you have been inspired by Tate and would like to do something out of the ordinary for our charity, we’ll give you all the love and support we can. Simply email lucy@childsifoundation.org

Winners of the CIF Tennis Tournament

A spectacular £530 was raised and the sun was shining which is more than can be said for our Together To Uganda campaign which I can honestly say could well go down as the worst day so far in the history of Child’s i Foundation (circa 15 August 2008)…

It was the first day of the Together To Uganda (TTU) at Beacon Community College. Imagine if you will 400 students ready to run a mile dressed up to the nines, collaboratively travelling 400 of the 4012 miles we need to cover to get to Uganda. Picture our youth team, two directors and a digital producer ready to kick-start our long awaited campaign – then visualise torrential rain, thunder, lightening – and health and safety abruptly putting a stop to our campaign. Well, you don’t even need to imagine it – here we go…

“Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, we all need one”
– Jane Howard

When I founded Child’s i Foundation last year, my life changed. I went from dividing my time between my day job and an outside life, to working 24/7 to get this project off the ground – but this week, I met a woman who has literally made me stop. The inspiring Julie Routledge is the Chair of AFADU, an amazing charity she founded five years ago to help women in Zimbabwe. She shared her wealth of experience with me, and one thing she said really made me think: “This project will only succeed if you let go of the reins.”

And she’s right. I certainly wouldn’t have made it this far without so many wonderful people giving their time, love and money to make this a reality. Together, we have a shared goal. And by ‘we’ I mean everyone who is already supporting us – and anyone who wants to be part of our group. If everyone involved held a UFU event, set up a monthly standing order, did a sponsored challenge or put on a fun event, bought a brick or told a friend about us, we would be out in Uganda saving lives in no time.

Supporters making a difference

Our planning trip to Uganda showed us first-hand the need for our babies’ home in Kampala, and if we pull this off, not only will we be saving lives, but giving hope to babies who have been abandoned and left for dead, with no one in the world to fight their corner. That’s our job. That’s why we are doing this. We already have a committed core team working a few hours a week (or 20 hours if you are Kirsty Stephenson!) outside their full-time job, but we urgently need more people to be part of our team.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON-ckpAquA8

Take a look at our video (produced and directed by CiF supporter Zoe Fryer) of what our current volunteers are up to. If it inspires you to join us, please get in touch by filling out our Get Involved form.

We’re looking forward to hearing from you!

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbEzYi7eL4k

Wow – this last 3 weeks has been a rollercoaster and we want to thank you for joining us on our journey and given us your time and love and made this trip a huge success.

Our aim was to make it as interactive as humanly possible and I think we pulled it off. Practically every night we have uploaded a video produced and edited by the brilliantly talented Saffron Jackson and our wonderful A Team in the UK and US comprising of Kirsty Stephenson, Matthew Knight, Lisa Howells and Matthew Edmonson have helped us distribute the videos onto loads of video sites across the worldwide web.

I want to thank Nerys Nicholls and Lara Gordon who have helped us with the logistics in the UK and Uganda

In Uganda we’d like to thank:  Mercy Ndirangu and Isobel Booth-Clibbons from Families for Children, Charles Mugasa, Esther Tumuhairwe, Ruth Chelangat, Diana Sande, Charles Banura from Home Start Uganda, the wonderful mothers who shared with us their experiences of bringing up ther children Nule, Esther, Christine, Lucy, Rose, Rosetta, Millie and Miriam, our team Norah Owaraga, Dr Catherine Ndekera, Peter Ndekera and Dennis Owaraga. Dr Atai and Faith Karamagi from Mulago Hospital, Mr Ssozi, John Kasule, Rachel Parsons, Larissa Rwakasiisi and Steve Waldron, Frank Dramba and Henry Walusimbi,Patrick our wonderful reliable driver, Barbara Nankya at Sanyu Babies’ Home, Barry Egan, Ben Ssebuufu, Damilie from Waaksia Ministries, Immaculate Kiiza from Hope For Children, Joel our housekeeper, Venita and Matt, Martin Shearman at the British High Commission and Kate Wedgewood from DFID.

We also want to thank everyone who has followed our journey and actually played a big part of the success – thank you for all you messages telling us to get some sleep, your questions and your brilliant support.

Lots of love Lucy, Brian and Saffron.

CiF Team

Building a ‘Home’ isn’t in line with today’s modern thinking on social or child welfare, but as I’ve said on numerous occasions, we are not building an orphanage – ours will be a place of safety and care that ultimately aims to place children back into families. I think it has really helped that Brian is out here now, witnessing first-hand the need for the Foundation. After 4 years of me talking (and talking, and talking) about it, he – and all our supporters – can really see for themselves just how much we can do to create change here.

Meanwhile, our plan is really beginning to take shape and I’m so excited that, as well as building a centre that will provide the best possible care and set up a social work department to find families for every one of our children, we are now also committing to tackle the root cause of abandonment. We’ll be working with the mothers to try and support them, so they don’t feel that abandoning their baby is their only course of action.

Today, we visited Waakisa Ministries, who provide care for pregnant teenage girls. The project really gave me hope – they have set up in just two years, and we could see that it’s very well run and making such a huge difference. I think when you come across projects that truly work, it’s very good to learn from them, so I would really like to keep in touch with Damilie and her team to share our experiences – and get as much of their advice as we can!

Tomorrow is a big day for us, as we are visiting Mulago hospital. 64 babies are abandoned there every year and we hope to work with Mulago and Home Start International in the future – so wish us luck!

When, last September, Lucy first told me about her ideas and asked me to be her Social Work Adviser I was, to be honest, rather sceptical. In my  long career  in Child Welfare, including work in Africa, I had learned to be very cautious about people with bright ideas and extremely doubtful about orphanages of any description. I remember writing some stern words of warning about her plans and rather hoped she would go away.

In the event, and being Lucy, she persisted and persuaded me to listen to what she had learned in Uganda over the last four years. Since then we have innumerable conversations and some arguments, about what might work best in Kampala and, most importantly for me, be consistent with modern social work principles and practice.

It has proved to be an intriguing but productive journey – the child care expert meeting the pioneering visionary, so to speak. And now here in Uganda we have had a chance to actually test out our ideas in practice by looking at a whole range of services, good and not so good, here on the ground and, above all, to talk with Ugandan families and professionals about what they want to happen to give families and children “at risk” a better chance.

I now believe that there is definitely a place for a relatively small – perhaps a 20 place – specialist transitional home or centre for babies and toddlers who have been abandoned in Kampala. The emphasis needs to be on top-quality care coupled with a total commitment to find families for these children as soon as possible.

But in addition to this I have always felt that more is needed and we now both see this in terms of some preventative services designed to offer help and support to mothers at the end of their tethers. I think that Home-Start Uganda could provide this for us at Mulago hospital. Later perhaps we might see a place for a day centre to support families in dire need.

Lucy and  are  very close now to an agreement about what Child’s i Foundation can  best do and I am feeling positively enthused about the difference the charity will  make  to the lives of  some extremely needy children  in Uganda.

What a journey – but what a worthwhile destination!

Show us your support and become a fan on Facebook – http://www.childsifoundation.org/go/facebook/planning

Meeting the British High Commissioner

In a really positive meeting, he congratulated us on what he described as our “culturally sensitive” approach of talking to the locals and people in the know about what we want to achieve in Uganda. A common problem here is organisations just transplanting western ideas, rather than listening to what the local people really need. And we would be making a mistake if we simply replicated another charity’s model – ultimately our aim is to set up a project that no one else is doing and is really going to make a difference to the lives of abandoned babies.

Counting down the minutes

Tomorrow we are giving ourselves a much-needed day off. Brian is a fishing fanatic and has been looking forward to a spot of angling on the Nile all week, while I can’t wait to spend some time with the kids at Sanyu. See you on Sunday, folks, and please do keep those questions coming.

Show us your support and become a fan on Facebook – http://www.childsifoundation.org/go/facebook/planning

Check out our team t-shirts

We're giving love

Here is an overview of the first week of our trip:

Please keep in touch x

Link to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taQD9Va_OOE

We plan to produce videos and updates daily. But that is easier said than done, as it could take up to 12 hours to upload a 3 minute video in Uganda! We only have 21 days and so much to do but we will try our best to make sure we update you with videos, blogs and photos. Wish us luck.

If all goes according to plan you’ll be able to watch our videos on: YouTube, Facebook, Daily Motion, Revver, Metacafe, Veoh, MySpace, Vimeo, Videojug, Seesmic, Vodpod and Blip (as well as our website of course).

But please don’t just watch us we want you to interact with us – post your comments, advice and questions on any of the video sites, our Facebook fan page or blog posts.

Join our FeedFriend or connect with us on Triiibes (if you are a member).

All the Tweeters out there if you do want to give us love – we’re @childsi and please use #childsiug so we can gather responses on our Squidoo lens.

Well, hopefully we have given you enough choice, you have no excuse. Please give us your opinion, give us advice, ask us questions.  We want you to join us on our journey.