Our goal for 2022 year end giving was $42,000 — and we raised $46,766!
2023, here we come!
Blessings,
Jennings and all of us at Touch the Slum
Time’s ticking! Can you hear it?? It’s almost 2023!
We’re so excited for 2023 and all the exciting things coming for Touch the Slum. Here are just a couple:
Literacy 2.0 will be coming in January! We’ll be able to greatly expand the number of girls we can serve, bringing literacy to more families than ever.
The farm will be fully up and running, ready to supplement our growing food budget.
We will begin our third year and 6th term of Skills for Life in February, and hold our fourth graduation! (Those just get better and better!)
100% of your donations ALWAYS go to the program. Have questions about that? Hit Reply and fire away!
We thank you so much for your support and encouragement this year and can’t wait to share 2023 with you!
Webele nyo!
Jennings
PS Here’s the link – and please share with friends and family!
First, we JUST crossed $75,000 in total donations raised on DonorSee – in just 16 months! As a small nonprofit, that’s HUGE!!! (And that’s all YOU!)
Second, we’re really close to fully funding the farm! And so much is going on out there right now – check out our Instagram page for more.
And finally, we’re pretty close to our goal for year end fundraising at DonorSee – which was a stretch goal to begin with. We’ve had 6 projects funded in the last 24 hours! If you want to help today or tomorrow, you can go to this page and either make an unspecified donation or see all our project.
We SO appreciate all your support, encouragement, emails, and (of course) donations over this last year — you’re the best!
Webele nyo!
Jennings
PS What are you doing to celebrate the new year?
There are a lot of things that make Touch the Slum different from other NGOs and community organizations in Namuwongo, but the main one is simple.
When I say that to people, they are often skeptical. Sort of the, “Wait, I thought you were a *serious* organization!”
We ARE serious. We are also striving for something better: cultural change.
Uganda as a whole has a very clear social hierarchy. There are the village and the city people. There are the chiefs and the educated who run things, and the poor and uneducated underneath. There are the connected and the forgotten.
It is “common knowledge” that anyone living in a slum (and there are more slums in Uganda than just Namuwongo, which is the largest) deserves to be there. “Those people” are drug addicts, thieves, prostitutes… in short, they’re written off.
And guess what? “Those people” rarely get the chance to experience the full breadth of human existence. They get a heaping plateful of sorrow, struggle, starvation, and sickness. The only fun or hope they get is a few sprinklings here and there.
We acknowledge that life in the slum is often catastrophically hard. Our primary mission is to create opportunities for teen moms and teen girls to build a sustainable — ie less hard — life for themselves.
But we also want them to have a reason to make difficult changes in their lives. Something worth fighting for on hard days.
Love, laughter, dancing, joy, good food, an outing, pizza, chicken and chips, ice cream, new shoes… These things give dimension and color to an otherwise black-and-white monotonous existence.
So we believe in fun. We believe in dance parties. We believe in Santa Clause (hats) and Christmas trees and Thanksgiving feasts and roasted goat for Christmas Eve. We believe in game days and art and books.
In short, we believe in hope.
Blessings,
Jennings
PS We have a dedicated “year-end” page on DonorSee now, with a goal meter and everything! You can check it out below — it shows you our progress and all our open projects. It’s pretty cool! (And we’re already more than 40% of the way there!)
PSS I did a fun podcast with Donorbox about writing newsletters (and really, writing advice in general). Thanks, Cara! You can check it out here:
I was invited by Cara at Donorbox to do a podcast on writing newsletters and it just dropped! Check it out – we had a fun chat. 🙂
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
YouTube
Amazon Podcasts
Blessings,
Jennings
Giving Season is just starting, but you’ve helped us start with a bang! If you didn’t get a chance to give yesterday (we still have some of the $5000 matching grant we can capture!), just click here!
Y’all rock!
Jennings
PS We’d love for you to share Ten Eighteen and Touch the Slum with your family, friends, and coworkers to grow our family over this next month!
PSS Today is my grandmother Ross’s birthday – she would have been 109 if she hadn’t passed away in 2020. (For the math-challenged, she lived to 106 1/2!) She’s my inspiration and the reason we started the Ross House two years ago, which led to all of our programs at Touch the Slum. I was very blessed to have had her for so long!
Jackie is a 16-year-old teen mom in our Literacy class. Sometimes she leaves her daughter in our free daycare, and sometimes she takes her to class. She’s not the only one – every class averages one baby or toddler every day!
But Jackie has never been to school, didn’t know how to read or speak English, and never dreamed she would have the chance to learn. Whatever she has to do to be in class she does.
We have 75 students at Touch the Slum. We are the only organization in Namuwongo that focuses on teen girls, offers free literacy and vocational training, has a residential program, and does community outreach.
This year alone we have:
Most of this has happened because you gave, you told people about our work, you invited me to speak, or you thought of the girls while cleaning out closets or shopping.
This year, we have a generous donor who has offered to match all gifts up to $5,000!! That means every dollar you give is doubled!
As always, 100% of your donation goes to the program. You can make sure we’re ready when the next teen mom like Jackie comes to us for help! Just click below, or mail a check to Ten Eighteen, 3500 Rock Creek Drive, Raleigh, NC 27609.
Tweyanzizza nnyo, tweyanzeege — we are so grateful, thank you very much!
Jennings
PS I’ll be doing an Instagram Live today with Ronald at 12:30pm EST – pop over and say hi!
I hope your Thanksgiving was filled with family, friends, fun, and zero-calorie food! Jackline and the teen moms in the Ross and Suubi Houses celebrated too, just not with turkey. (There actually are turkeys in Uganda, but trust me, you wouldn’t want to eat them!)
Giving Tuesday is coming up and we’ve got a matching grant! This is the kickoff to Giving Season and a great time for you to make your year-end donation to Ten Eighteen – especially since your money will be doubled up to $5,000! You can also choose to become a monthly donor through DonorBox or a monthly sponsor for a project on DonorSee. (As I used to say when I had my bakery, I’ll take everything but wampum!)
2022 has been a HUGE year for Touch the Slum. Thanks to you we are now housing 12 teens and their children, we have 65-75 students at the compound daily, and we are growing all kinds of things at our farm. In our wildest dreams, we wouldn’t have thought that you would get us this far this fast.
Yesterday, what we were most thankful for was you.
Webele nyo,
Jennings
PS If you’re not already following us on Instagram, it’s a great way to see your support in action. We post videos every day! You don’t have to have the app or have an account – you can just visit on the web and check it out.
Blessings!
All of us at Touch the Slum
Over the weekend, Ronald had the flu, so when his 26th birthday came on Monday, he wasn’t ready to celebrate. (We’re so thankful for Nurse Sherry who got him on some meds to help!)
But he’s feeling better now, and we want to make sure he knows how much we appreciate all the amazing work he does as our Managing Director. Need a list? Let me count the ways:
We literally couldn’t have built the program that we have without Ronald over these last 2 1/2 years, and I am thankful every day for him.
Hit Reply and send a shout-out. I’ll forward it all to him!
Blessings,
Jennings
PS SAVE THE DATE! November 29th is Giving Tuesday! Not sure what Giving Tuesday is? From their website:
GivingTuesday is a global generosity movement unleashing the power of radical generosity. GivingTuesday was created in 2012 as a simple idea: a day that encourages people to do good. Since then, it has grown into a year-round global movement that inspires hundreds of millions of people to give, collaborate, and celebrate generosity.
