I can’t believe it was 2 years ago when we first opened the doors to Malaika Babies Home and accepted our first two babies. Last week we had a wonderful birthday party to celebrate and we could not have done this without you.

• In two years you have provided life saving care to over 100 babies.
• You saved the life of baby Joey in 39 hours and changed the futures of many children like Polly
• You believed that it was possible to find families for children instead of keeping them in orphanages. You’ve helped young mothers to keep their babies and proved that by investing in social workers it was possible to trace relatives and reunite 66% of children back into their extended families.
• You’ve given families the tools and expertise to earn an income to be able to provide for their children instead of abandoning them.
• You believed that is was possible to find new adoptive parents for children instead of keeping them in long term institutional care and celebrated our first adoption. Since that happy occasion, and thanks to the national media campaign to promote adoption in Uganda over 20 more children have been approved by the panel and adopted into families – which is such a feat considering adoption is not very common in Uganda.

I wish you were all there at our party to celebrate what you’ve achieved and enjoyed a piece of birthday cake. We were honoured to invite the Hon Amb. James Baba – our Guest of Honour – who did an inspirational speech and Mr James Kabogozza, the Assistant Commissioner of the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development and Mark Riley, a consultant who works with Mr Kabogozza on the Alternative Care Task Force.

There was a great article in the New Vision by Agnes Kyotalengerire in one of Uganda’s leading daily and Keren Riley wrote a lovely blog post about the day about the day and took some wonderful pictures.

One person I would like to thank is the very special Megan Howard. Megan is responsible for setting up Malaika Babies Home. It was Megan who worked around the clock to make sure the staff provided the best possible care and trained up Peninnah Nanziri to take over the management of the home. She then went on to run the Social Work department and has always been our rock and safety blanket and I miss her. After two years of working at Child’s i Foundation in Uganda she has gone back to Australia and sadly missed our second birthday party celebrations. Child’s i Foundation would not be what it is today without her and for that I am truly grateful.

Our Social Work Team have been very successful tracing children’s extended families and resettling them. Growing up in their family means they will grow up with a sense of belonging and identity.

What we’ve discovered is that the extended family members we do manage to trace usually live miles away from Kampala. We’ve created a map which we’ll keep updating so you can see for yourself how far we go to reunite children with their families.

We always do follow ups to ensure they are safe and thriving in their family and continue to monitor them for a year or until we are confident the child is safe which means on average our social workers and family support team travel over 4000 kms per month which costs us around £645 on fuel a month.

So far we have resettled and placed 65 children into families which we are so proud about but our new community care pilot will mean even more children will be placed into families and there will come a point when we cannot do it all.

Last month we resettled a little chap back into his extended family in Kisoro on the border of the Congo, 491 kms away from Malaika Babies Home which would mean a thousand mile round trip to check up on him.

We used the UCRNN resource directory and came across a project called Potters Village who like us focus on resettling children into families.

They have very kindly agreed to regularly check up on his progress and send us social work reports on a monthly basis.

This is a long shot but we need to find more organisations like Potters Village to create a network to ensure children we place into families are safe. If you know any organisations outside of Kampala who have a great social work team and would like to discuss being part of this network please do get in touch.

Together we can.

How did you hear about Child’s i Foundation?

I heard about Child’s i Foundation through a company called AfID. AfID helps place Accountants within grass root charities in order to help build their financial capacity. AfID suggested that Child’s i was a really good organisation that was supporting an important cause. Having read a bit more about the charity and after talking to Lucy about the organisations vision, I knew that I wanted to work for Child’s i.

AfID were really helpful at not only introducing me to to the charity, they also offered a variety of support whilst I was out in Uganda.

What did you do before working/volunteering for Child’s i Foundation?

I worked for Nestle for 3 years on their finance graduate scheme. A lot of the business experience that I gained from being at Nestle came in useful whilst working for Child’s i. Although they are completely different organisations, some of the skill sets that are required are similar in certain respects.

Prior to working at Nestle, I studied geography at Nottingham University and spent a year travelling around Asia and South America.

Why did you want to work in a developing country?

I really enjoy experiencing different cultures and places. Having never been to Africa before, going out to work in Uganda was an exciting proposition.

There was also an aspect of wanting to try and help out a group of people that are vulnerable and have few places to turn for support.

What was your role for the charity?

I was the Finance Management but got involved in all types of things from HR, operations, and procurement.

What were your main achievements?

The thing that I am most proud of is helping train up the local Ugandan accountant who I was working with. He was really appreciative of the support that I gave him and I think in a year or so he might be in a good position to take on the Finance Manager role himself.

Briefly describe a typical day in a life in Uganda?

Impossible, there really is no typical day. You arrive into the office with things all planned out but something new and unexpected would always arrive on your desk that would take things in a completely different direction.

What were your highlights of your placement?

Seeing the children leaving Malaika and being resettled with their family has got to be the highlight. It was also great to go and visit the children back in their traditional Ugandan family homes after they had been resettled. It’s really motivational to see that the work that you are doing is really helping change children’s lives.

It was also really nice to share the whole experience with my girlfriend, Nikki.

What was the biggest challenge of your time here?

Staff and volunteers become so passionate about Child’s i Foundation that it becomes really difficult to separate your work and social life. You find yourself working over the weekends and talking about Child’s i related stuff all of the time.

How is it back being in the UK (talk about your new job)?

It’s always nice to come home but I really miss Uganda and all the people that I met. Working for Child’s i Foundation really confirmed for me that I wanted to continue working within the international development sector. I have just got a job working for Save the Children who also have a presence in Uganda so I might get back to see everyone a bit sooner than a thought.

Do you still give us love?

After working for Child’s i it’s hard to not continue supporting what they do. My girlfriend and I are running the Brighton Marathon in April to try and raise a bit of money. I am also a member of the recently formed Finance Committee that will support the Ugandan staff and Board of Trustees on all financial matters.

As volunteers and staff at Child’s i Foundation, we also love our mums. We know how lucky we are to have them. And that there’s no-one else in the world like them.

That’s why we’re helping vulnerable mothers with young children become better mums.

Maureen was referred to our Social Work department at the end of January. She was a mum to triplets weighing only 1kg each. Maureen had nowhere to go and the chances of her daughters’ survival in their village was very slim.

Our team of trained nurses and carers are helping her be a good mum, teaching her how to look after her precious daughters. After one month in our care all three girls have doubled in size and Maureen’s confidence as a mum grows every day.

Treat your Mum to a special gift this Mother’s Day (18th March) so we can help more mums like Maureen and more babies can grow up in loving families instead of an orphanage.

Buy a gift from our online baby shower

• £13.50 can provide clean drinking water
• £16 can provide a returning baby’s care bundle
• £38 can cover a babies medical costs

We were over the moon to hear that the team at Trilogy – the natural skincare brand based in New Zealand – chose Child’s i Foundation as their charity to celebrate their 10 year anniversary and have designed Trilogy Helping Hand Wash (a gorgeous, limited edition product created specially for Child’s i Foundation).

They are donating 100% of profits to Child’s i Foundation so please go and buy this beautiful gift online at Trilogy or at Boots (if you are in the UK). It will also be available from major department stores very soon. It’s a great gift and opportunity to convince your work place to restock their hand wash supplies with this special edition!

Watch the team in Uganda putting it to the test!

We could not do this without you.

We are proud to share with you our new mission statement video (thanks to Ian Warren) which shows the problem of baby abandonment in Uganda and how as a worldwide community, we are are finding loving families and giving children a future.

If you want to get involved, here are ten simple ways to really make a difference.

1) Watch our new mission statement video and share with your friends and family what we’ve achieved together.

2) Come and meet us in person at our Meet Up on Thursday 12th January at the Golden Fleece Pub in Bank at 7pm. For more details email martha@childsifoundation.org

3) So far 93 supporters around the world give to us every month which is our lifeline. We really need more generous people to set up a regular gifts to ensure we can run our babies home. Please set up a regular gift here

4) Join our Facebook Group and invite your friend to join. Here we share with you all the families you help to make and regular update you on the events at Malaika Babies Home.

5) Join our mailing list and receive our regular newsletter.

6) Please think of us next time you are buying a present for a friend or loved one. We can’t think of a better gift than garbage disposal for a week!

7) Thinking of making a new years resolution to give up smoking or running a marathon to get fit? Why not set up a Just Giving sponsorship page and ask all your friends to donate – that way you will have to do it!

We rely on a worldwide community of volunteers to help run our charity. If you have the time and skills please sign up to get involved.

9) If you are inspired by Hazel Buck and her Community fundraising team in Sussex and want to set up your very own fundraising committee for Child’s i Foundation please email hazel@childsifoundation.org

10) If you have a digital camera that you don’t need anymore we really really need one! Please contact lucy@childsifoundation.org

Thank you and we wish you a very Happy New Year.

Our home was full and we needed to find families for children so we launched a mass media campaign to promote local adoption and it was a great success with over 100 Ugandan families contacting us and undergoing assessment.

Deciding on whether the families are suitable is a huge decision which we did not want to make alone so we established an adoption panel (first of it’s kind in Uganda) chaired by the Ministry of Gender to make the decision collectively.

The panel consists of representatives including Caroline Bankusha from the Kampala City Council Probation Service, Gad Mfitundinda Hashaka from the Police Child Protection and Family Unit, Rachael Arinaitwe, a lawyer from ANPPCAN Uganda. Mark Riley from the Ministry and Christina Sempebwa an adoptive parent.

The forth of our adoption panels took place this week, with  panel members reviewing assessments carried out by our team of Social Workers. So far we have had 17 parents approved by the panel and as a result 15 children from Malaika have been adopted.

But it doesn’t stop there. As a result of our mass media campaign, our adoption panel and the fact that 54% of all our children are returned back to their families. (Which makes a lot of sense considering that 60% of children in care have families) we have empty beds.

We’re proving that children do not need to stay in long term residential care and it is possible to find them families so the next challenge we faced was working with the agencies who received the children so they would call on us to take the children into care.

Currently we have 6 empty beds so we decided to hold an open day for the Police who are the agency who receive most of the at risk, abandoned babies and children in Kampala.

Yesterday 18 members of the police child protection unit came to visit our home for the first time and we had a brilliant day.

They were very impressed with our carers and how happy the children were and saw for themselves how we go about finding families for children so fingers crossed that next time they receive a child under 2 years old who needs emergency care and protection we will be getting a call.

I’d always enjoyed putting on local events to raise funds for sports club etc, so it seemed natural to get a few friends together who I knew were keen supporters of Child’s i Foundation, and form a small committee.

Our first event was ‘Undress for Uganda’ – a clothes-swapping party where everyone brings along good-quality items of clothing to sell, which we soon got other people copying. With a £5 entrance fee (which includes a glass of wine!) and most items on sale at £5, they always prove to be really fun, sociable evenings. At our first, we also had a reflexologist and someone painting nails, also at £5 a pop, and we raised £1,081.

This spurred us on and our committee grew from four to eight. One of our committee is a keen walker and suggested organising a walk around our local Ashdown Forest for friends, families and dogs on a Sunday morning. We have since made this a regular event (Spring and Autumn) and the band of walkers grows every time. We charge every adult £5 and organise it so that it ends near to a local pub for a pre-Sunday lunch drink.

We also hold a spring children’s “nearly-new sale” each year. We hire the local village hall and leaflet-drop locally asking for good-as-new babies’ and children’s clothing and toys. The sale itself is growing in popularity as more people get to hear of it, but the advantage is that we are able to send any remaining good clothing, equipment and toys direct to Malaika Babies’ Home. In fact, nothing goes to waste as any clothing left from Undress for Uganda along with the Children’s nearly-new sale, gets take to a car boot sale by two of our committee members where the majority gets sold.

It’s always a challenge to come up with new ways to raise funds and, in April this year, we held our first Quiz Night. We managed to persuade a colleague, Chris, to take on the job of MC for the evening, found a very reasonable caterer and got our husbands to run the bar and the evening bought in just over £1,000. This will definitely become an annual event.

We sometimes find that people approach us for help in putting on an event, and we’re always pleased to lend a hand. This year, one of our supporters, Brent suggested holding a cricket match, Rotherfield v Child’s i. He was home from Japan for a month and, in a very short time, put the game together, coercing (in some cases) cricketers who had not played for several years. It was a beautiful summer’s day, tea was provided by all the players and a raffle and quiz rounded off the day. Taking into account the short time it took to organise the event, an amazing £450 was raised by two enthusiastic teams of cricketers keen to do it all again next year.

This brings us to the end of the summer when, two years ago, we held our first Golf Day. With two of the committee being keen golfers, we decided to rally our friends, find a course and put together a golf day. It was quite a feat in the end and we were grateful for all the help we could get! However, undaunted, we have just held another Golf Day and can honestly say it was a great success, bringing in just over£2,500. The players are asking for another next year, but bi-annually is enough for us organisers.

All the family have got involved. Tea Tunes and Talent is the brainchild of Jo Farrelley, Lucy’s great aunt. A talented pianist and member of Groombridge Amateur Dramatic Society, Jo wanted to raise some money for Child’s i Foundation and realised that a lot of elderly people prefer to go out in the afternoon rather than have to come home after dark. She spread the word and soon had lots of local support and set out a programme of popular music and sketches along with an interval with delicious cakes and a cup of tea. A sing-song at the end rounds off the event and inevitably a few tears are shed by the audience as they sing along to old favourites. She has now organised 2 of these events and we are hoping that there will be many more to come!

So that just about sums up our year. We have learnt a lot, especially to stick with what we know. Being a local community group, we also have to be careful not to approach the same people all the time, so try to cover different groups and not rely on friends – we want to keep them! However, at the end of the day, the charity sells itself. Its transparency, and the fact that supporters feel they know the children they are helping, makes it so easy to encourage them to donate. Our mantra is to make sure we “Keep the Fun in Fundraising” and think that is what we do.

Thanks to Sharon, Lyn, Janis, Liz, Julie, Delny, Jeannie, Vicki and Gillian for their tremendous support. They have raised an incredible £7,043.33 so far this year which pays for all the home for a whole month.

If you would like to put on your own fundraising event in your local community please do drop me a line hazel@childsifoundation.org

All of our project are pilots. In fact, I was told not to even call it a pilot, but view it more as a ‘proof of concept’ – we want to prove our concept works and with your support, we’re really demonstrating that transitional care is possible in Uganda. We had no idea whether we could resettle children back into families, but we’ve managed to place 43 children into families after an average stay of five months. We were told this would be impossible, but now we are working closely with the government and we want to share our model of care to help other institutions  provide transitional care as an alternative to long-term institutionalisation.

We’ve learnt that there are many young mothers out there ready to abandon their babies but, given the choice and a little support, we can prevent this happening. So many mothers turn up at our centre that we always have an on-call social worker on hand to give guidance, support and advice. Sometimes, when the family has rejected the mother because of the pregnancy, all it takes is a third party to help them come to terms with the new baby and often all a mother needs is a small amount of money to help with a few months’ rent.

If the mother is truly destitute, we’ve exhausted all other options and the child is at risk, we admit the child into Malaika but encourage the mother to spend as much time with her baby as she can, learning how to be a good parent. At the same time, our social work team work with them to help change their circumstances so they can afford to keep their baby.

Reunited with Mum

But this is not the end of our intervention. When the child goes back home to their family, we work with them for up to a year to ensure the child is safe. We have some incredible Family Support Workers, who visit families frequently and teach them good parenting. Here is a film made by our new volunteer Tom Hollings about the work our Family Support Worker does with one of her families:

As usual, we couldn’t do this without you. Thank you to everyone who has made Child’s i Foundation what it is today, and thank you for continually supporting our work and being part of a community who believe the best place for a child is in a family.