Friend, can you imagine life without a computer or the internet? Sure, a lot of us are old enough to remember way back when to the dark ages… but can we imagine going back to that time?
Uganda has used the pandemic lockdowns to drive a lot of in-person activity online: registration for national ID, school services, job applications, and even some health service information.
The problem is, most of Uganda doesn’t have
power
internet
computers
computer literacy
Our goal at Ten Eighteen’s Touch the Slum Namuwongo project is to educate the teen moms and girls in our programs so that they can create a sustainable income and improve their quality of life. We feel that becoming computer literate is a key for all the girls as they grow into self-sufficiency.
This project is now up on DonorSee! Check it out — remember, you can give “in honor of” another person, so it makes a perfect holiday gift!
We first met Jenifer in early 2020, when she was very pregnant and homeless. We were able to refer her to a Namuwongo organization called Amani, which helps teen moms give birth safely. However, they don’t offer care once a baby is born, and Jenifer went back to staying with various friends. Each time, they were chased out of their housing by the landlord for not paying rent.
Jenifer came back to the office when Liz was 18 months old. Once again, she was homeless, malnourished, and sick with malaria.
We admitted her to the Ross House, where she has received medical care, sexual trauma counseling, psycho-social counseling, mentoring, and is enrolled in Skills for Life learning Tailoring.
Liz is one of 5 babies/toddlers living in the Ross and Suubi Houses. There are another half dozen belonging to teen girls in Skills for Life. Most days, all these young moms bring their children to class, tied to their backs or sitting in their laps while they work.
While they make it work, it’s obviously distracting — anyone with a curious child knows how hard this must be!
In early 2022, we will be creating a small daycare for these sweet kids. Moms like Jenifer can leave their child while they’re in class or out working, and know that they are safe, happy, fed, and loved.
Want to help? We’ve got a DonorSee project up to fund the daycare – check it out! As of today, we just need $295 to fully fund this project and have it up and running when classes start back in January! Webely nyo!
I can’t believe it’s been a year. Or maybe that it’s “only” been a year — we’ve done SO much more than we expected, and have so many great things already in the works for 2022.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!
This is Sharon’s story. She is one of the 6 girls who has come into the Ross House program for teen moms in crisis in 2021. Because of YOU, she has hope and opportunity!
It’s almost our FIRST ANNIVERSARY! We opened the Ross House a year ago, and my how we’ve grown!
What started out as an idea I got while walking on the beach contemplating the devastating effects on teen girls of the COVID19 lockdown is now a bursting-at-the-seams, thriving hub of activity! Every week we have
5 teen moms in 2 residential settings
1 homeless teen girl in a dormitory
20 teen girls and moms in Skills for Life
30-40 visitors for Saturday’s Turning Point
A dozen girls for Friday’s Teen Talk
20 girls in Strong Mind Mentoring groups
We average 1800 meals a month in our Namuwongo project, and we’re growing all the time! Coming in our second year: a computer lab, literacy class, advanced tailoring class, a daycare for our teen moms, and an expanded residential and dormitory program.
Our partnership with DonorSee is allowing us to provide the needed supplies for the girls in Skills for Life, give micro-grants to teen moms to start a small business, handle medical emergencies, and grow our program. We have also been able to provide much needed food for our foster families in Mbarara. We expect the last two months of 2021 to be huge for us on the platform, and we’re so thankful to those of you who have checked us out over there!
At the end of the month, on the 30th, it’s Giving Tuesday. Like all nonprofits, our year end campaigns are really important to keep us healthy for the upcoming year. Please follow us on social media and sign up for our weekly newsletters — we’ll have all the Giving Tuesday and Year End Giving information for you!
We’ve been working in Uganda almost 13 years now, and while our programs and focus have evolved, one thing remains the same: we want to create meaningful opportunity and skills so our participants can be self-sufficient.
SKILLS FOR LIFE –
Mildred is 12, the youngest girl in our Skills for Life Vocational School. She is learning tailoring, so that she will have a skill on which to build a life outside of desperate poverty. She has never been to school before.
We have 20 teen girls like Mildred enrolled in Skills for Life, and a waiting list for the next term. Twenty girls completed Term 1 last year, just before the lockdown happened (which cancelled Term 2). When girls like Mildred learn a skill like tailoring, they can get an actual job, or they can have their own business. SKILL + HOPE = OPPORTUNITY.
RESIDENTIAL PROGRAMS –
During the 2020 lockdown, we realized quickly how many girls were using sex work to survive. That resulted in skyrocketing teenage pregnancies all over the country.
To respond to the need, we opened the Ross House for teenage moms like Gloria, who are in crisis. This halfway house provides medical care, food, clothing, shelter, vocational training, sexual trauma counseling, psycho-social counseling, and childcare education.
As the first moms were finishing the Ross House program, we realized that now we needed a transition house, to prepare them to live in the community and be self-sufficient. We opened the Suubi House to provide oversight through a live-in social worker, financial and business training, and continuing medical care, food, clothing, and shelter as they learn and grow.
When Term 2 of Skills for Life opened after the 2021 lockdown, Cecilia became homeless. We opened a dormitory to house any students in the current term who are faced with the same situation, and provide medical care, food, and shelter for them during their training.
FOOD FOR CHILDREN –
We began providing food for children at Hopeland and Wells of Hope Primary Schools and the Arise Africa Babies Home in May, 2019. The 2020 and 2021 lockdowns have created a lot of disruption, but we continue to provide monthly food to about 75 children even while schools are (still) shut down.
Mama Mary has had 5 foster children for 19 months now! (It was supposed to be 4…) Forty orphaned children from Hopeland School are currently living with 9 foster families. Schools are supposed to begin a phased re-opening in January 2022.
We have two ways you can join us in our work — we’d love to have you in the Ten Eighteen family!
FUND SPECIFIC PROJECTS ON DONORSEE – we have 8-10 specific projects on Donorsee at all times. Donorsee allows us to post videos of the projects, updates, and follow-ups, so you can see exactly what your money has done for the project’s recipient. It’s a great way to really feel involved in Ten Eighteen’s work and in our Ugandan community!
As we announced in our last email, we were invited to post a project on DonorSee. Once that was funded, they did some research on us, checked out our follow-up video and communications, and we got approved to be full partners with their platform!
With DonorSee, we are raising funds project-by-project. Their philosophy is to introduce donors to individuals and families, see their need first hand, and then post a follow-up video to show exactly where the money went. (Donor + See)
To be honest, it’s a lot more work for us since it involves a lot of video production. It also has forced us to be focused not only on our overall programs but on how they are helping individual youth — and that’s a good thing! We want you to have options, and we want to be able to introduce DonorSee’s 18,000 donors to our work in Uganda.
We will have about 10 active projects in the $50-500 range going at all times on DonorSee, so you can check back weekly and see what we’re up to. We’ll let you know how it’s going in our newsletters from time to time, and will always include a button for you, too.
Would you please share with friends, family, church, or small group? We love to grow our Ten Eighteen family and need help more than ever thanks to the latest lockdown!
NOT ON OUR MAILING LIST YET? JOIN HERE! WE DON’T SPAM YOU AND NEVER GIVE AWAY YOUR INFORMATION.
First, let me apologize for not blogging in so long! I honestly had no idea it had been 6 weeks… I have sent out a good number of short email updates during that time (less than one per week), so please feel free to subscribe there to not miss anything!
Jenifer and daughter Liz at the Ross House
WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH THE LOCKDOWN?
While schools are still closed for at least another 2 weeks, the country has been gradually opening in a “partial” lockdown scenario. There are still a 7:00pm curfew, capacity limits, and other SOPs in place, but life in the slum (where few authorities wanted to go even during the most strict part of the lockdown) is getting back to normal.
Skills for Life Term 2 is in week three, with the classes having been divided between Advanced and Regular on Monday to better facilitate everyone’s learning. We have 20 girls working very hard to take advantage of this opportunity!
On the dark side, mass evictions – halted for a short time during the lockdown – have begun again. Of course people in the informal economy can’t pay… they used their business capital for food, and have no way to earn back that capital to restart a business, nor to pay the landlord. Landlords are businesspeople too, I know, but it would be easier to have sympathy if slum landlords weren’t (as a general but not universal rule) well, the epitome of slum landlords. There was also a tax increase on landlords on July 1 from 10% to 30%, and of course they must pass that on. The end result is that we are seeing a huge number of homeless and pregnant girls.
WHAT WE’RE DOING
Our landlord – who is actually really great! – has been working on the buildings at the back of our compound during the lockdown. We spoke to him, and were able to secure not only a lot more space for our programs, but also a promise that he would only rent to women who he has thoroughly vetted. We didn’t want to move, but also didn’t want to expose girls who had undergone sexual trauma to strange me. (Men aren’t allowed in the Ross House at all.)
What that means:
We are moving the Ross House to a large apartment, which will allow us to double our capacity for teen moms. The apartment has a bathroom and kitchen.
We are taking the whole lower section of the new building, which adds 5 rooms plus a kitchen and bathroom. We will convert one room into a dormitory for S4L girls who have become homeless and have no family; one room will be the new Advanced Tailoring class; and one room will be a classroom where the S4L girls can learn basic reading and math. We’ll see how we grow with the other two!
We were able to secure this space for not-quite-double our existing rent, which is amazing given the increased tax the landlord is paying to the government. We are so thankful!
MORE TO COME!
We are so excited how far we’ve come in the last 10 months, and excited to see where we are in 2022. If you’d like to partner with us to give teen girls and moms the skills to be self-sufficient, we’d love to have you join the Ten Eighteen family!
We’re at day 44, between the first partial shutdown, and the total lockdown. We’ve got about 10 days to go – in theory – but no one actually expects the lockdown to be lifted or even eased. FOOD INSECURITY and starvation continue to be the #1 issue throughout the country and our programs.
BUT THERE IS SOME GOOD NEWS, TOO!
Gideon, Director of Hopeland and Wells of Hope Primary Schools, welcomed his first child on Saturday. Wife Winnie and baby Nathaniel are doing great!
We’ve had local donations of food from businesses like Xara Ranch and Lekker Bakery, as well as from expats who have heard about our work and want to help. This is making a big impact!
The Suubi House is open and running smoothly. Gertrude, the caretaker, reports that the girls and their babies are adapting wonderfully. They are all still eating, bathing, and doing laundry at the Ross House — only a 5 min walk away.
We are able to keep the girls from Skills for Life who have been struggling with mental health issues busy with the Ndoto co-op and outreaches into the community. They are also receiving food for their families, which is relieving the burden there and minimizing the type of atmosphere that leads to child bride practices or other behaviors leading to teenage pregnancy.
ALL of the Primary 7 students from Hopeland School passed the National Leaving Exam in March, thanks to your donations that allowed us to hire teachers, provide transportation, and create home-study materials for them during the 15 month school closures.
Gloria, 16, has come SO far in her 4 months at the Ross House! She is now the “senior”, and is ready and willing to help new emergency admissions in the coming weeks.
IT’S BEEN A DIFFICULT TIME, BUT THANKS TO OUR WONDERFUL DONORS AND SUPPORTERS, WE ARE STILL ABLE TO SERVE THE MOST VULNERABLE IN UGANDA.
THANK YOU!
To help vulnerable children and teens, you can donate here! 100% of your donation goes to the work – we can’t do it without you!
For the last week, we’ve been posting photos on social media that don’t include faces. Since we love our beautiful girls, we’ve gotten some questions as to why we stopped showing them.
One word: SAFETY
With the imposition of the total lockdown a couple of weeks ago, the government has made the slum a dystopian nightmare of roving gangs robbing and even killing for food.
People are choosing between rent and food if they do have any money, and starving beats being homeless – so they are starving.
Even one meal of porridge a day seems like a luxury. People are showing up at our gate regularly who haven’t eaten in days, and the last thing they ate was a thin posho (ground maize) gruel.
ONE OF THE HARDEST FACTS WE FACE IS THAT WE CAN’T HELP EVERYONE.
We started our Adopt a Girl (AAG) program to provide food to those in our program who are the most at risk of being sold as a “bride;” or of voluntary or forced prostitution. Even within our program, we can’t provide food for everyone… But we CAN remove the single biggest factor for teen “marriage” and pregnancy at the moment, and that’s FOOD INSECURITY.
FOR $50, WE CAN FEED A FAMILY OF 5 FOR A MONTH. WILL YOU HELP?
To say that things are bad in Uganda is a pretty serious understatement. People are already starving and facing eviction, and because of a new 20% tax on landlords starting July 1, they are being made to pay increased rents even while making no money.
ESCAPED
We had a very scary incident today. One of our girls, Brenda (not her real name), 17, answered a call from a man she didn’t know who offered her a housekeeping job. Brenda’s family is out of food and desperate, so she went to find out about the job.
The man locked her in a room and tried to rape her. His plan was to keep her imprisoned in the house, forcing her into sex and trafficking her to others.
Fortunately, Brenda fought her way out and escaped being raped. She was beaten up and covered with bruises, but because she wasn’t actually raped, the police just filed the statement along with the hundreds of others just like it that they’re getting.
HUNDREDS OF OTHERS. And we’re 10 days into a 42 day (minimum) lockdown.
We held an emergency meeting when they got back to the office. OF COURSE, Brenda is traumatized. And there are many more girls who are facing this and who maybe won’t be so lucky.
We have a total of 40 teen girls who have either completed Skills for Life or are on the waiting list and who had just had orientation for term 2 when the lockdown came. There are another 15-20 who are involved in other ways in our Namuwongo program. They are ALL extremely vulnerable.
SOLUTION: WILL YOU ADOPT A GIRL (AAG) FOR ONE MONTH?
For $50 we can feed a family of 5 (the average number in the slum) for a month. FOOD INSECURITY is the #1 driver of voluntary or forced prostitution for teen girls. Through the AAG program, we can remove that burden, we can protect these precious girls and get their families through the lockdown.
Posho, a staple in Uganda, is corn flour
We have also relaunched the Ndoto cooperative, which we ran in 2014 and 2015. Teen girls from our Skills for Life Term 1 who are at particular risk of trafficking, mental health issues, and/or homelessness will be working at Skills for Life to design and create products that we can sell once the lockdowns are over. These girls will make a salary on top of an AAG allowance of food for their family.
SUUBI HOUSE – WHERE HOPE LIVES
We finally got the keys for our transition house this week!! The painting is done, the beds and mattresses are in, and most of the necessities will be purchased this weekend. The power will get hooked up (eventually).
This means that Sharon and Shadia and their babies will be able to move from the Ross House soon, making room for us to take in emergency cases of teen moms in crisis. For the duration of the lockdown, the girls at the Suubi House will still eat and bathe at the Ross House, which is only a 5-minute walk away.
While we knew we needed this house before the lockdown, the current situation means that we will get many more cases of teen moms in crisis referred to us that ever before. Making space at the Ross House to bring in these precious girls and their babies is crucial!
YOU CAN HELP SAVE TEEN GIRLS TODAY!
100% OF YOUR DONATIONS GO TO THE PROGRAMS – WE TAKE NOTHING OUT OF IT. AND OUR AVERAGE TURN-AROUND FROM DONATION TO THE TARGET PROGRAM IS 5 DAYS. YOU CAN TRULY CHANGE A LIFE TODAY!
