Donations

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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ADVANCED TAILORING FOR THE WIN!

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Ever since our first ever term of Tailoring, which ended in June 2021, we have been dreaming of an Advanced Tailoring class. Most of the girls in Tailoring go on to have a small business doing basic designs: school and work uniforms, traditional gomeza dresses, simple skirts, repairs. Some find good work in shops or with organizations like the ones who make Wonderbags in the Namuwongo slum.

But there are some, like Vivian and Jenifer who we’ve written about often, who really have a flair. Their designs are special, and only their skill level has kept them from great achievement.

Not any more!

About 2 1/2 weeks ago, our Advanced Tailoring class launched. Teacher Martha is a professional seamstress with a shop of her own, and she spent a great deal of time assessing the girls for both skills and dreams so she could design a curriculum to launch them into the next level.

Skills for Life currently offers 4 Basic skills and now one Advanced one. These courses are FREE to the teen girls and teen moms we serve. In addition to the actual coursework, they get free medical care at our on-site Haven Clinic, free child care at our on-site daycare, psycho-social counseling, mentoring, and peer groups. They also get 1-2 meals a day.

FREE. No strings attached.

Obviously, this isn’t free to Ten Eighteen! Your support of our projects on DonorSee, or with one time or recurring donations on DonorBox, are what make this possible. We grew 70% last year thanks to YOU.

We’ve got lots of great projects up on DonorSee right now, and you can always make a one time or recurring donation using DonorBox. The buttons are below – we’d love to have you join us!

Blessings,

Jennings

DONORBOX

DONORSEE PROJECTS

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WHY THE GATE MONTHLY GIVING PROGRAM?

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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.

WHY THE GATE MONTHLY GIVING PROGRAM? Read More »

HOW DOES 100% OF YOUR DONATION GO TO THE PROGRAM?

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Since we started in 2008, we have used 100% of our donors’ money for the programs.

YES, 100%!

Surprisingly, people have argued with me (at length) as to why and how that can’t be true, even while our books and statements clearly show it is. So I thought I’d explain how it can be so.

  • I work from home.
  • We have no paid staff in the US.
  • We do not pay for ads on social media, unless someone donates specifically for them.
  • When I travel to Uganda, we personally donate to cover those expenses (flight, transportation, accommodations, food).
  • We receive in-kind donations that cover our website, accounting and donation software, and business cards.
  • We use an app called SendWave that lets us use mobile money on MTN and Airtel phones in Uganda to send money without any fees on our end. (There is a small tax on their end, which we figure in.)
  • Our donation platform lets donors choose to pay the fees for their card processing.

BUT WHY AREN’T YOU PAID?

I started this as a labor of love, and, to be honest, until 2020, it was a part time (sometimes VERY part time) job. When I’m in Uganda, which was twice a year until we moved to Nicaragua in 2016, it’s 70-80 hour weeks of working, but at most that’s 5-6 weeks a year. Even when I restarted in 2019, the work was less than 4 hours a month.

AND THEN COVID…

When we visited last January, I did feel strongly that we had the groundwork in place to grow. In February, I started getting Ten Eighteen ready to apply for grants. And then Covid arrived on the scene, and all the best planning went out the window. Grants pivoted to all things covid. Uganda locked down in a draconian way, and people began to starve.

So all the “formal” stuff went out the window, and we worked many many hours a week, just trying to keep people alive, provide meals, solicit donations, explain what was happening, and keep going by faith. The aftermath of the lockdowns, school closures, destroyed businesses, and starvation took months to fully realize and to begin to sketch out a way forward.

MEANWHILE, ALL OF YOU STEPPED UP WITH DONATIONS EVEN WHILE YOUR LIVES WERE IMPACTED SO GREATLY!

WE ARE GREATLY BLESSED…

One day, and thanks to (we pray) grants, we do hope to pay people — that will mean that the work has grown to the point that our impact in Uganda is where we envision it. But our belief is that YOUR hard earned money should go to the programs that you believe in. To the work, to feed children in devastatingly poor schools, for vocational training to teens in the slums who have nowhere else to go, to the teen moms at the Ross House, to clean water for Rwakobo.

I am blessed – we are blessed – that life in the US, while difficult over this last year, has let us offer our skills and work as volunteers. I’ve been to Uganda 13 times — we’ve been 29 times as a team — and we understand how great the needs are there and how far even a small amount of money can go.

NO ONE CAN DO EVERYTHING, BUT EVERYONE CAN DO SOMETHING.

HOW DOES 100% OF YOUR DONATION GO TO THE PROGRAM? Read More »