Imagine… you grew up in your country’s largest slum, desperately poor, unable to go to school more than just a few terms.
Imagine… you’re a teen girl with a single mother, living with 6 siblings in one room.
Imagine… your country has a complete lockdown and there is no… nothing. There is especially NO HOPE.
Now imagine that you’ve gone through free vocational training to learn a skill that can allow you to get a job or start a small business. The 2021 lockdown delayed your graduation by 6 months…
BUT THE DAY IS FINALLY HERE!
IT WAS AMAZING!
The current Skills for Life tailoring class made the caps and tassels. (The gowns were a last-minute borrow!) The hairdressing class did everyone’s hair so they looked gorgeous. Families and friends came, speakers encouraged and praised them, they danced and ate and had cake — and couldn’t get those grins off of their faces.
THANK YOU!
Your ongoing support and graduation-specific donations made this day possible!
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!
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!
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!
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!
Prices have jumped on pretty much everything, including food. Fortunately, we bought at least 6 weeks’ worth of dry goods and charcoal last Monday! We had a friend bring matoke and bread by today, which will help so much!
Uganda is mostly looking at cases, not hospitalizations and deaths. Because they’re doing more testing, cases are going up. And yes, Uganda has a terrible medical system in general. (I can say that since my son was in a Ugandan hospital with pneumonia for 4 days!) But the president will be speaking again Thursday, and everyone is worried he will announce stricter lockdown measures since they are using the “cases” measurement. This would be REALLY bad.
Because of that scheduled announcement, we are waiting to start the new Skills for Life term. Meanwhile, the teachers are using the time to finalize their teaching manuals, and the tailoring class has presented their final design projects today.
The Suubi House landlord is stuck at Mulago hospital with his daughter, who has been diagnosed with COVID so now he can’t leave until the 14 day quarantine period is over. That means we don’t yet have the key! But we have ordered the furniture items that have to be built so we’ll be ready to get it done quickly once we can access the home.
We now have 8 girls from this last Skills for Life term working!! This is HUGE! (Youth unemployment is Uganda’s biggest problem.)
YOU GUYS ROCK!
Thank you to all who have donated to help in this crisis! We will keep you updated here but joining our newsletter and following us on Instagram and Facebook are the best ways to get up-to-date info!
That’s the best word for it. The president had addressed the nation several days before about rising cases of COVID19, but said they were not locking down. Then, Sunday night after 8pm, he announced that a 42 day partial shut down would begin on MONDAY.
To say there was shock, dismay, anger, and chaos would be an understatement!
Chaos in Kampala as people try to leave the city before the deadline
After a REALLY good week last week in our programs, with graduation for our first term students from Skills for Life just a couple of weeks away, new water filters for Wells of Hope School, students reporting in stages back to the two primary schools, and two of the hairdressing girls hired by salons, we were very… UPSET.
Here’s what we know so far:
Schools are CLOSED. They just started reopening in March, and several grades hadn’t even come back yet, so we are now at about 15 months without school for many students. Since our schools service extremely poor children, this also means they lose the food and supervision they get at school. In the case of Wells of Hope, they lose the only clean water they have access to.
Churches, mosques, and other houses of worship are CLOSED.
Important gatherings, such as burials and weddings, are limited to 20 people.
Inter-district travel is restricted starting the 10th. (He did allow a few days for people to get home, at least.)
The informal economy has effectively been killed again — the only markets allowed are government sanctioned ones.
WHAT WE ARE DOING:
The primary schools are closed, which left about 10 children who are true orphans once again homeless. The foster families who took them in last year graciously agreed to receive them again, so they have been relocated to those families. We will be providing them food as we did in 2020, and they all were given Wonderbags so that will help with charcoal costs.
The girls from Term 1 of Skills for Life are finishing up their final projects. We can distance them, and make sure to stay under the “3 people” limit so that they can complete the term. Our graduation ceremony will be held once the restrictions are lifted.
Term 2 of Skills for Life is on the drawing board. I should have some updates for that by the end of the week, as the staff meets to discuss our options.
Two of the girls at the Ross House have been there for four months, and are ready to move on once the S4L term ends. We have located a place for the Suubi House, and should have access to that by the end of the week. We have to furnish it, but we will have the girls and social worker eat at the Ross House to keep extra expenses down for now. (It’s very close by.)
We are brainstorming ideas to keep the kids in the various programs ENGAGED and BUSY during the coming 6 weeks. During the lockdown of 2020, teen pregnancies skyrocketed, child bride practices escalated, and drug and alcohol use increased. While we can’t have our Saturday Turning Point, we can continue counseling sessions and small gatherings, and we are working on ways that the teens can get involved in the community to keep them busy and out of trouble.
Prices have already gone up significantly on food and charcoal, because of the inter-district travel restrictions. We are cutting expenses where we can to prepare for emergency situations. Please consider setting up a monthly donation of ANY size ($3/mo is the minimum and even that is so helpful!), or a one time donation.
THIS WEEK WE LAUNCHED THE GATE – FOR A REALLY GOOD REASON!
Uganda is a developing country with the world’s youngest population. Unemployment numbers are a joke* — even young people with university degrees can’t find paying jobs and usually “intern” (work for free, even for the government) for years before possibly getting a paying job.
In our programs, we are dealing with the extreme poor, the uneducated, the orphaned or abandoned, the homeless. Unemployment, other than informal self-employment, is literally 100%.
So outside of our regular budget, we have regular problems come up, like three babies in two weeks getting pneumonia. Transport to the clinic or hospital, medical treatment, daily transport for IV antibiotics… All that adds up. And while it’s very small compared to US standards, our budget is pretty small too!
By joining our passionate supporters together in the Gate, WE get a stable revenue flow, and YOU get to really see the IMPACT of your donations on a monthly basis. We want you to know exactly what your money is doing, who it is benefitting, and how we go about our work.
By joining the Gate, you get:
Monthly updates with behind the scenes information, stories and photos
Quarterly LIVE video meetings with our US and UG staff where you can ask any questions and get to know us
For the first 100 members, you’ll become part of our Founding SUUBI ALLIANCE with extra perks
Nothing changes on your end — you choose your monthly donation and set it up on Donorbox. But you get all the access above so you get to know the people whose lives you are changing and be part of our life-changing community!
JOIN THESE SMILING FACES!
CHECK OUT THIS VIDEO WITH ALL OUR PROGRAMS – WE’D LOVE TO HAVE YOU JOIN US IN CHANGING LIVES TODAY!
*Unemployment numbers for Uganda are all over the place, depending on who is reporting it. Government numbers can be as low as 1.84% (an absolute farce which anyone who has ever been to Uganda knows), to as high as 80% – a much more likely number. The truth is, MANY millions of Uganda’s 43 million population have no employment, no way to gain employment, and no safety net to help them.
We got a call from local authorities in early November about a girl who had just given birth who was living under the small roof of a video shanty. Esther and her baby were very sick.
We got her and her baby to a clinic, where she was diagnosed with a bad infection due to childbirth complications, and the baby was also ill. Both were treated, and we moved them temporarily into a small garage of a now-closed nonprofit who allowed us the space for a short time. Mama Santa visited and brought food several times a day, and made sure that Esther and the baby took their medications.
When we opened the Ross House in mid-November, Esther was one of our first residents.
She cried for an entire week.
After just a month, Esther had gained weight, gotten well, and was full of smiles.
She enrolled in our first Skills for Life, choosing hairdressing. She also learned a “small skill”, how to make samosas, and was given the tools she’d need to start a small business while she learned her “big skill” over four months.
Esther graduated from the Ross House at the end of January, having completed our Sexual Trauma Workbook and our basic financial and business literacy training. When she moved in with her sister nearby, she took a month of food with her for the household, as well as all she would need to run her samosa business in the morning and attend the hairdressing class in the afternoon.
While her brother-in-law eventually decided he didn’t want Esther and Ella living with them (we moved her in with a family from church), Esther continues to thrive. She is excelling in the advanced class, and working extremely hard on her skills and creativity.
ESTHER IS NOW ALMOST UNRECOGNIZABLE!
She’s the one on the left… To be honest, when Ronald sent me this photo, I didn’t realize who was in it!
This is real change, and thanks to S4L, lasting change.
The Ross House family expands with every graduate — and they remain our family, with access to medical care and food, continued counseling, and opportunities.
MAY 26, 2021 UPDATE
On Saturday, Esther taught a skills workshop on how to make and sell samosas to 15 young people!! She did an amazing job, earned some money, and gained a huge amount of confidence. AMAZING!!
THIS IS OUR WHY!
AND THIS IS YOUR IMPACT!
Thanks to you and donors like you, we are able to create dramatic, deep-rooted change that will affect not only girls like Esther, but their children, their extended families, and their community.
AND THAT’S TEN EIGHTEEN’S MISSION: TO CHANGE THE CULTURE OF EXTREME POVERTY FOR THE YOUTH OF UGANDA.
