Clinic

So Many Updates, So Little Space

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I don’t usually do bullet-list updates, because I love to tell stories. But sometimes we just have so much going on that you should know about… Today is that day, so here we go!

  • Ronald is doing training with Plan International and one of their partner organizations, and has repeatedly been told that they can’t believe there isn’t a “hidden mzungu” somewhere funding everything because we get SO MUCH DONE on such a small budget. Y’all can take a bow, because that’s all YOU!
  • Ronald has also been asked to do a guest lecture at Mkerere University on our work with teen girls and children in the slum! Way to go, Ronald!
  • We had two sewing machine projects funded this week on DonorSee, one for resident teen mom Harriet for her new life in the village, and one for Husinah so she can support her family in the slum. It was all done in one day and both girls were so excited! Harriet is holding the sign, in the black and white strips. We’ll sure miss her!
  • On Sunday, Betty boarded a bus for a week-long intensive training with Neema Development, the provider of our Entrepreneur Training Course. This is going to enable us to expand this course to more girls, and also add the second half of it. Because you all have supported our Literacy program, we can move deeper into the training. Mwebele nnyo!
  • Our new nurse, Brenda, completed her time learning our compound Haven Clinic with Nurse Sherry and is now our full time nurse. We will miss Sherry so much, but we’re excited to welcome Nurse Brenda to the TTS family.
  • And last but definitely not least, we have now had 275 projects funded on DonorSee! That’s over $113,400! If you haven’t checked out our page there, just click here. We always have 10-12 projects up, and we have a new large project in the works which is super exciting. (Yep, that was a teaser… more to come!)

You all are the lifeblood of Ten Eighteen Uganda and Touch the Slum, and the only reason we can do so much to change lives and culture in the Namuwongo slum. We honestly can’t thank you enough for your generosity and support. (Really, take that bow!)

Mwebele nnyo!

Jennings

PS Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram where we have daily video of all that’s happening. When you get 100 people in a small compound every day, there’s always a LOT going on! We also have a YouTube channel with some fun video.

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Oh, Hey! (Yes, I Forgot!)

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Let me apologize for forgetting to write this blog yesterday… When you work both from home and 7 days a week, sometimes keeping track of the days is a problem!

But lots is going on as we get ready to start up Term 2 next week. Here’s a recap:

  • The Literacy girls did not have a break, and they’ve been working and playing hard with fun activities, games, and puzzles that Teachers Fortunate and Moreen have given them. Some of the girls are moving on to Skills for Life next term, but over half are staying in Literacy.
  • Literacy will expand from 20 to 30 girls next term, thanks to our friends in the Expat Money community.
  • We’ve expanded and updated the clinic during this time between terms, and we’re ready for the new term. We do have a project up to help with this expense, so just click here if you’d like to help!
  • We’ve had a TIA experience on the clinic re-registration. (“This Is Africa” – said when people who work for the government get… creative with their job roles.) First we had 36 hours to find an autoclave, which we will NEVER need since we use pre-sterilized and packaged supplies and instruments and send difficult cases to the hospital. Second, he now wants to hold up the registration over not having a poster outside the door, which he never mentioned before. Ronald reports that he is (so far) remaining calm!
  • Sylvia is mostly back to her normal self after the loss of baby Alpha 6 weeks ago. Obviously, grief is like a wave, and nights are hardest, but she’s fully back to activities and I get video of her laughing and joining in, which is good to see. Thank you for helping us give them a proper ceremony and burial.
  • The crops at the farm are growing like gangbusters – check out the reel I posted on Instagram last week to see the beans and maize in particular. We are so thankful for our little farm!

The new girls will come next week for orientation in Skills for Life – we’ll have an update on the new “class” next Wednesday! (And yes, I’ll remember! haha!)

Thank you for all your support and encouragement!

Webele nyo!

Jennings

PS Bridget is joining the Literacy class next week. Her project for supplies is over 60% funded and we just need $50 to close it out. Can you help? See her story and donate by clicking the button!

Help Bridget with suppli

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Rainy Season in Uganda

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I’ve spent a lot of time with my Ugandan friends trying to explain the concept of seasons. (I haven’t been that successful!)

In Uganda, there are just rainy and dry seasons – two of each per year. We are coming to the last few weeks (we hope!) of this fall’s rainy season, which has been brutal.

  • At least 24 were killed in flooding in Eastern Uganda in August
  • Thousands were displaced by flooding and landslides in Western Uganda in September

Our own programs have been affected, as you can see from the picture above of Hopeland Primary School in Mbarara. Wells of Hope and the surrounding village in Rwakobo have had even more significant flooding. The work on the farmhouse was delayed significantly by rains.

You may not know it, but Kampala is about 3000 feet above sea level. I’ve only had one trip in 14 where I was hot — often I’m wearing jeans and a sweatshirt! And few windows have glass in them so the damp cold is hard to get away from when it never seems to stop raining.

We’ve had several girls struggle to control their asthma during this time, and about three times the usual number of respiratory illnesses. We’ve even had some cases of dysentery due to all the contaminated water girls have to walk through to get to class.

So… Did you know that you can sign up as a monthly sponsor of our Haven Clinic? It’s true! We are at 40% right now. There’s no minimum to be a sponsor, and it really helps us keep all our teen moms and teen girls healthy by paying Sherry’s salary and restocking the medications we use daily.

SPONSOR THE CLINIC!

Webele nyo!

Jennings

PS Bonus picture of Sylvia with her new baby boy (no name as of yet) coming home from the hospital to lots of love yesterday!

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It’s Rainy Season & We Need Mosquito Nets!

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Last week we had 7 girls to come to the Haven Clinic with malaria. Nurse Sherry didn’t get her Sunday off, because she was tending to all the cases!

The treatment for malaria is a week-long course of IV infusions. It requires a temporary canula that is left in for the whole course of treatment, as well as the nurse to administer the medication. With 7 girls currently receiving treatment, that’s a lot of medicine and supplies!

Malaria makes you feel terrible, but left untreated it can cause brain damage, or lie dormant in the liver only to cause relapse and illness later. We had a boy in the basketball camp we held in 2013 who had been quite severely impacted by cognitive impairment due to untreated malaria.

Why now?

It’s rainy season, and that means lots of puddles, filled drainage ditches, and other areas of stagnant water. While we have mosquito nets in our residential houses, those do get torn, or mosquitoes can be trapped inside during the day.

Currently, the tailoring class is repairing all of our mosquito nets, but that still leaves all the girls in our program who go home to houses without. We have a project up on DonorSee right now for 25 nets, the first effort to get nets to 100% of our students and staff.

You can help – a donation of any size gets us closer to a net for everyone!

Let’s buy some nets!

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An Amazing Donation of Medical Equipment from MDF Instruments

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Back in January, another partner on DonorSee who works in South Africa contacted me. We have very similar (and not the usual) definitions and understanding of nonprofit work, and she wanted to connect me to a medical instrument manufacturer who had donated a lot of equipment to their clinics in SA.

This week we got the box from MDF Instruments in Puerto Rico, and it was Christmas in March! This is professional quality equipment: stethoscope, blood pressure cuffs in sizes from baby to large adult, and much more. (Stuff I don’t know the name of, for sure!) And a sweet note to our nurse, Sherry, about being a nurse.

I will be taking all this equipment over with me in May, along with SO MUCH more that has been donated over the past two years. (To be honest, there’s no way I can take it all in one trip!) We’ve got clothes, shoes, reusable sanitary pads, books, toys, laptops, iPads, tote bags, and first aid supplies… Lots of it.

This kind of generosity and commitment to people you don’t know and won’t ever meet is what makes Ten Eighteen Uganda successful. Whether it’s your money, your product, your kids’ toys and clothes, or handmade reusable sanitary pads, YOUR generosity makes us successful.

And we appreciate you more than you can ever know!

If you have things to donate besides money, do me a favor and hold onto it until June! After that, I’ll have some room to store it until the next visit. 🙂

Blessings,

Jennings

PS. Becoming a monthly donor of ANY amount helps us so much. We’d love to have you join us. 100% goes to the programs. Just click the button below!

I want to be a monthly donor!

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Free Health Care Is Crucial To Our Girls

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Since we opened the Ross House in November 2020, providing health care and medical treatment for our girls has been a priority. It is a lot easier to get sick while living in Uganda’s largest slum than it is to stay well!

Up until February, we sent all our sick girls to Dr. Francis, who gave us a discounted rate and didn’t require up-front payment. Still, the cost of an exam, treatment, hospital visits for daily IV injections, and transportation added up. And the bigger we got, the more we spent. (Thank goodness for our partnership with DonorSee that started in September 2021!)

But one day in January along came the idea fairy, who dropped the idea of an on-site clinic in my head. After adding up what we’d averaged per month on medical treatment and comparing it to what we’d have to pay a full-time nurse plus medications and supplies, it was quite obvious that the better solution was to open an on-site clinic.

Lately, we’ve had a run of typhoid in our community, thanks to the rains and dirty, contaminated water that the girls drink at home. Malaria also surges when there are lots of puddles and congested drainage ditches for mosquitoes to breed in.

Because of the Haven Clinic and nurse Sherry, however, our costs are still below what we spent in an average month treating fewer girls. The girls and children are healthier and do better in class. And few are getting very sick now, since we can treat things when they start, not when they’re “bad enough to justify a doctor visit.” It’s been a big win-win!

As always, thank you so much for your support! Please forward this and all our emails to anyone you know who might be interested in our work. I’m available to speak to groups, too! Just use the Contact form!

Webele nyo!

Jennings

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15 Years Old and a New Mom – Kalunji

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Kalunji came to our program when she was 5-months pregnant. She was living with her grandmother (jaja) in a terrible wooden shack in the slum. They didn’t have enough food, but her jaja insisted that Kalunji eat to nurture the baby.

Our team, with help from our donors at DonorSee, provided food, a mattress, bedding, a mosquito net, and a water filter for this small family. Kalunji began spending her days at the compound, even though she wasn’t enrolled in any of our programs. We fed her two meals a day and got her enrolled with Amani, an organization that helps teen moms with prenatal care and childbirth.

In January, Kalunji began learning reading, writing, basic math, and English in our new Literacy Program.

A month ago, Kalunji presented to our nurse at the Haven Clinic with severe malaria. She began an IV treatment and went into labor (about 3 weeks early) that evening.

Unfortunately, Amani was completely full! We also hadn’t purchased the required birthing kit yet. But our nurse, Sherry, called all around Kampala and finally found Kalunji space at the KCCA Hospital, where she gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Kareem.

Kalunji moved into the Ross House, our residential program for teen moms in crisis, from the hospital. Two weeks later, her jaja died.

Raheem is a month old now, and doing really well! Sherry gives him all his regular checkups, as well as Mama. Kalunji is now back in Lit class, and she’s even rejoined dancing in Teen Talk on Fridays.

Next term, Kalunji will join one of the vocational classes in Skills for Life.

THIS IS WHAT WE DO, AND WHY WE ARE HERE

Girls like Kalunji, forced to trade sex just to have food or sanitary pads, are forgotten, shunned, ignored. Illiterate, desperately impoverished, and with no living family to help, her chances of even surviving childbirth were low.

But now she is safe, healthy, cared for, and learning.

There are thousands like Kalunji in the Namuwongo slum, and we can’t help them all. But those we can bring into our program are given sustainable skills, counseling, mentoring, and the life skills needed to not just survive but thrive.

These are hard stories… But they are stories of HOPE. OPPORTUNITY. CHANGE. And they are possible because of you.

Webele nyo!

Jennings

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THE NEW HAVEN CLINIC

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Our new clinic, which we decided to call the Haven Clinic, opened on Valentine’s Day. Its function is to serve the girls, children, and staff in our programs — right now that’s about 60 people not including babies.

We already need to restock some supplies and medications! Our full-time nurse is doing well-baby checks, dispensing medications for cough, doing malaria and typhoid rapid tests, and keeping records on all the babies so we can make sure they’re healthy and developing well.

This is HUGE. Health care, even for very serious illnesses and diseases, is out of reach of almost everyone in the Namuwongo slum. We’ve done a lot of DonorSee projects to help us cover the costs we’ve incurred over the past year. The average has been about $90 — while the average income in the slum is less than $10 a month.

But now, we have scenes like this. Teen mom and Ross House resident Christine’s joy at baby Zoe’s first-ever wellness checkup. Free of charge.

It doesn’t get much better than this!

Thank you for all your help and support as we’ve set up this clinic. Obviously, we will have ongoing costs of medicines, supplies, and the nurse’s salary. You can become a monthly donor (in any amount!) or donate to our current DonorSee project by clicking the button below if you want to help.

Webele nyo!

Jennings

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THE CLINIC IS OPEN!

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During 2021, we had a LOT of medical issues come up for our girls and babies. The most common were malaria and typhoid, but we’ve also had intestinal parasites, pneumonia, and burns… to name a few.

We have a wonderful doctor who sees our girls at a discount and without requiring payment up front. But he does, of course, require payment in short order, as does the hospital where most treatments have to be done. (Many meds for advanced typhoid and malaria, as well as antibiotics for children, are done through an IV canula that stays in for a week). Plus there’s transport to and from the hospital on boda bodas.

We’ve done a LOT of DonorSee projects to cover medical bills… So I’m not sure why I didn’t think of it before, but in January it hit me: OPEN A CLINIC, DUMMY!

So we did! We’d contracted for more space within our compound in August, and at the end of the year most of it was finally ready. That allowed us to move the Ross House girls to a more private apartment area and free up rooms in the main house. VOILA! A clinic was born.

We are now officially open for business, with a fully stocked medicine cabinet, first aid supplies, IV supplies, a bed, and a full time nurse.

We’ve already had our first patients!

Of course, this is free to our girls and their children (and our staff). But it’s not free to US. We will have ongoing expenses to restock medications and supplies, as well as the nurse’s salary. We also had the expense of setting it up. If you’d like to help, just click the button below – 100% goes to the program.

Thank you ALWAYS for your amazing support! We’re so grateful to have you with us.

Blessings,

Jennings

SUPPORT THE HEAVEN CLINIC

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