Inflation

There’s a Growing Food Crisis In Uganda

Just like everywhere these days, food prices have gone crazy in Uganda. While somewhat lucky in that it only gets 60% of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine (vs 100% for many African countries), it also usually gets a lot of the remaining supply from India, which has cut off wheat exports due to their own problems.

Additionally, fuel has doubled in the last several months, so that per gallon it’s now over $7.30. (They sell by the liter and it’s always more than here in the States, but this is brutal!) Obviously this effects the price of everything!

Finally, seasonality + fuel prices + supply chain problems have created a huge food crisis in the country, and particularly among the poorest — which is who we work with.

Our own food budget at the compound has doubled since January — and we’re even buying less food! Some things are completely off the menu, like chapati, and serving sizes have been reduced a bit to try to stretch the budget.

After a lot of talk, we have decided to create a large project on DonorSee to purchase 2-3 acres of land to start a small farm. Not only will this give us a sustainable source of food, it will also allow any girls who want to learn to grow food the chance to get new skills. (There’s not a lot of farming in a slum of 30,000 people!)

The project will launch next week! We’re still finalizing some prices, since everything seems to go up every day, and working on a video to show just what this project can achieve. We hope you’ll check it out once we launch, and help us continue our goals of sustainability and teaching lifetime skills to our teen moms.

Webele nyo!

Jennings

PS To donate to the farm project, click the button!

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Inflation Hits the Slum Hard

Just before I sat down to write this, Ronald sent me today’s quote from President Museveni on the food crisis happening in Uganda right now:

“Africans really confuse themselves… If there is no bread, eat cassava. I don’t eat bread myself. The issue of skyrocketing commodity prices, like petrol and fertilizers, is man-made by our friends in Europe.”

That was it. Don’t eat bread. (For what it’s worth, most Ugandans never eat bread. They do make chapati from wheat flour, though.)

So anyway…

Our food budget in January of this year, which included other items like office stationery and detergent, was about 4 million shillings, or $1100. For May, it’s 4,480,000sh for just the food, and another 1.3 million for the supplies, soap, detergent, and toiletries. That’s $1585. Nearly a 50% increase.

We do have a project up on DonorSee to help with some of this cost, and we’re working on some other ways to increase fundraising around food costs. One thing we AREN’T doing is not feeding our girls, their kids, and our staff.

If you’d like to help, there are buttons at the bottom of this email where you can either give a one-time donation to the DonorSee project or become a monthly donor in any amount to help us with our ongoing costs. We’d so appreciate your support!

I am also attaching a link to a new video that Bob Ditty’s assistant helped us make from the footage they shot in March at our compound and in the community. It’s really great! Click this button. (Yeah, I know there are a lot of buttons today… Sorry about that!)

Let me see the new video!

Thank you so much for your ongoing support! I know things are challenging everywhere right now, and that you have a lot of places you could invest your money. We really appreciate that you choose to invest in the future of teen moms and girls in the Namuwongo slum. Webele nyo!

Blessings,

Jennings

Take me to the DonorSee food project!

I want to be a monthly donor!

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