Literacy

When not owning knickers is the norm

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The trip coming up in January will be my seventeenth trip to Uganda. In January 2009, we funded the rent for a building for Ray of Hope’s outreach to women and children in Namuwongo. On our first trip in September of 2009, we made our first visits to the slum.

I’ve been down in the “community” (the slum proper) at least a hundred times, conservatively.

And I can still be shocked.

Many of our girls have one outfit and one pair of shoes, usually knock-off cheap “Crocs”. I know this. I’ve known this. It’s a challenge.

But what I’ve learned since launching Touch the Slum is that many have no knickers (underwear) at all, and that their families often don’t consider it their “responsibility” to provide them.

Let’s be real for a second: teen girls have periods.

Even girls who can’t get sanitary pads need to use rags during their cycles. Practically speaking, underwear is pretty vital at least a week a month.

Owning zero or just one pair of knickers is a problem. They can’t come to class one week a month. They can’t go out of their house one week a month. They can’t launder their one skirt or dress without being left unclothed while it dries, which obviously leaves them completely housebound.

I don’t know about you, but I find that completely unacceptable. (To be honest, very few things make me actively angry… but this is one of them!)

Each term, we do a project to supply girls in need with underwear, a toothbrush, and toothpaste. Each term, you come together to help us fund this, so that no one misses class due to a lack of knickers. Together with our monthly sanitary pad distribution, you keep girls in class and active their community. And you help them keep their dignity.

It’s amazing how such a small thing can completely transform a life! To help, just click the button.

Knickers Project

Tweyanzizza nnyo, tweyanzeege — we are so grateful, thank you very much!

Blessings,

Jennings

PS If you’ve missed our My Story series so far, you can always visit our YouTube channel to see those and other great videos on our work in Namuwongo.

Creativity and Confidence

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The slum is not a nice place.

You probably thought, “Well duh…” to that, because obviously it wouldn’t be called a slum if it was somewhere lovely.

But seriously. Beyond the obvious (filth, muck, abuse, drugs and moonshine, starvation, illness… SMELLS), everyone there operates in survival mode 100% of the time.

In survival mode, you’re not creative. Your body is flooded with cortisol and adrenaline. Your immune system is terrible. Your brain is a weird combination of hyper-alertness and fuzzy thinking.

This is how our girls live all the time when they’re not at the Touch the Slum compound. In the community, they can turn to little baggies of waraji (moonshine made in 50 gallon drums that makes turpentine seem like fine wine) or marijuana to try to ease the stress. If they escape that, they turn to young men who promise some stability but just leave unclaimed babies after they disappear.

One of our missions at Touch the Slum is to create an atmosphere where the girls can not only learn but also RELAX. Feel safe. Laugh. Dance. And create.

In March, my mom, Susan, introduced the girls in the Literacy class to drawing and painting. They loved it! Ever since, we’ve made it a regular part of the curriculum and it’s one of their favorite things.

When the team goes in January, we will have my mom again, who will continue to teach drawing and painting to the girls and staff. Connie is a glass and pottery artist so she’s going to teach those skills. And I’ll be bringing creative writing to the girls with some fun activities to help them have fun with their newly learned English words.

Much of life involves creating: outfits, artwork, stories, hairstyles. Once they can envision the small stuff, they can see the project that will be their masterpiece:

A life.

Thanks to you, these girls are learning to think creatively and expand their dreams. That’s an amazing gift and we can’t thank you enough.

Mwebele nnyo,

Jennings

PS Are you following us on Instagram yet? We’ve had some great reels there, and the media team is doing a great job with our content. Click the icon below or here to check it out!

13-year-old Joyce is on her way to her own small business!

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When Joyce came from the village to the Namuwongo slum last year to live with her auntie, she had never been to school. While her aunt is a tailor herself, she was unable to take the time to teach her niece the skills she’d need to earn a living.

But she did make time to bring her to Touch the Slum and enroll her into the Literacy Program, and that has made all the difference!

This is Joyce’s story.

Joyce’s Story

TODAY IS GIVING TUESDAY — please forward this to friends and family and ask them to help support Touch the Slum today! 100% of donations go to the program.

Blessings,

Jennings

PS Every day we have 75 students in Skills for Life, a FREE literacy and vocational program for vulnerable teen girls in Uganda’s largest slum. It only costs $35 per girl per month to learn, have a meal, receive medical care, and have a safe place to spend their time. Can you donate today so girls like Joyce can secure their future? Mwebele nnyo!

DONATE NOW!

Neema is a refugee from the Congo – this is her story

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According to the UN, 8000 people a day are currently fleeing the violence in the DR of the Congo — a total of 6.3 million people have been displaced so far. Many end up in Uganda, who has a policy of accepting all refugees.

Unfortunately, accepting them doesn’t mean helping them, so many end up in areas like the Namuwongo slum.

Neema’s family — mom with six children — live in a ramshackle hut in a refugee heavy area there. But Neema has an advantage over most of the refugees who are her neighbors: she’s enrolled at Touch the Slum.

When she joined the Literacy Program in June, Neema only spoke French and Swahili. Now she can speak English and is teaching her siblings.

This is her story.

Neema’s Story

Blessings,

Jennings

PS $35 covers one month of Skills for Life at Touch the Slum. Can you make a donation today to help Neema and others like her? 100% goes to the program!

DONATE NOW!

PSS Have you wondered what life is like in the Namuwongo slum? Our great media team has just finished a video to show you!

Life in the Slum Documentary

When Things Are “Mostly” Free

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Have you ever been up in the middle of the night, finding yourself watching infomercials (am I showing my age here?!), ready to dial in for some FREE STUFF?

If you did, you likely discovered that the FREE STUFF cost you money to ship, or required a subscription, or some other back-door way of getting your money.

Uganda’s school “system” is like this.

First, there is no system. Not locally, regionally, or nationally. There are a very few “government schools” but not in the sense we in America and the West understand them. They aren’t open to everyone, and they aren’t free.

Second, “school” is a bit generous! They use a very antiquated semi-British colonial system requiring rote learning and endless repetitions of facts. Most are hugely underfunded, teacher pay is terrible, and the pandemic lockdowns where schools were closed for almost 2 years shifted many good teachers into other jobs.

Third, even at a government school, it’s not “free.” Students are required to bring many of the things we would consider the school’s responsibility, like toilet paper and brooms. They are required to wear uniforms including shoes, which many Ugandans don’t have. They have to bring paper and pencils and pay for testing. Even in a free school! If it’s a fee-based school, even if it’s very inexpensive, they have to pay at the beginning of each term.

This is why only about 60% of Ugandan children go to primary school on any regular basis, and less than half of those go on to Secondary. This is doubly true for girls, who many families refuse to spend money on.

This is why a program like Touch the Slum is so vital to the vulnerable teen girls in the slum. We actually ARE free. 100%, never-any-cost FREE.

We provide Literacy, Skills, food, medical care, daycare, sanitary pads, diapers, clothes and shoes, mosquito nets, water bottles, and, to those especially vulnerable, assistance to the family. AT NO COST.

I don’t know about you, but to me…. that’s what FREE means!

How do we do it?

YOU! You and others donate so our girls can create a self-sustaining life. It’s pretty amazing — and we can’t thank you enough for the impact you are making every single day.

Mwebele nnyo!

Jennings

PS We’re halfway there on our reviews at GreatNonprofits – can you take a couple of minutes to leave one today??

LEAVE A REVIEW!

PSS We’ve got a bunch of projects up right now on DonorSee, like this one for disposable diapers for our 20 teen moms. But check them all out, watch some videos, and see what we’re up to every day!

DONORSEE PROJECTS

To visit our website, click here! And for great tees and sweatshirts supporting 1018, check out our Bonfire page here!

What Does “Game Day” Mean To You?

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We’ve recently started using Dropbox to share all our media back and forth, so I get to go on and click through so many fun photos and videos looking for a good photo for you.

I was clicking through photos of a recent Game Day, and was really taken by the focus and intensity of every single person playing every single game in every single photo. Even Chutes & Ladders!

I thought about it for minute and realized why:

PLAYING is a big deal to everyone in our program.

They don’t have the kind of life where you just get to play a game, watch football on television, even just sit and do something fun, with no “work” purpose.

They have the kind of life where you start doing at dawn, and you’re still doing well after dark. Hand washing clothes. Walking to fill jerry cans of water and carrying them back home — multiple times a day. Cooking on a small charcoal stove. Washing dishes in a bucket. Doing day labor or a small hand-to-mouth business. Tending mostly-naked small children as they run around in muck-filled canals. Walking a half a mile for a workable toilet (that you have to pay to use).

Over the last couple of years, you have donated for us to buy board games and balls and balloons and art supplies and toys.

You have brought a totally new concept to hundreds of lives:

FUN.

I would argue that it’s (almost) as important as the food, clothes, lessons, and medicine you also provide — because it gives the WHY for those things.

I love this quote: “Play is our brain’s favorite way of learning.” -Diane Ackerman

What really makes you guys amazing is that you don’t “require” us to to show you all the terrible things about the slum to want to give. You also give to bring joy and fun and sparkle and laughter.

Basically… you rock!

Blessings,

Jennings

PS Are you following us on Instagram and YouTube? You need to be! We’ve been working on some new short documentaries with more in the works, and our daily Instagram at both Ten Eighteen Uganda and Touch the Slum are full of great content to keep you up to speed!

“I want that report on my desk yesterday!”

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See my face? That’s kind of what my face looked like when Ronald said that the government body regulating community organizations told us on Monday that they’d passed a new rule on reporting, so we had to have a detailed accounting of ALL our activities for the year-to-date. ON FRIDAY

I love Uganda. I really do. But this? Nope. Don’t love!

It’s not like we couldn’t do it — and they did do it, for which I’m very proud. It’s just a reminder of how many things are out of our control.

We can’t control that there is no universal, free education so all girls get to go to school.

We can’t control that most people, from those in government to those living in expensive houses literally a street away from the slum, think that people living in the Namuwongo slum “deserve it” for some reason.

We can’t control that employment opportunities for youth are so bad (unemployment for youth in Uganda is over 60%) that sex work is often the only choice left to desperate young girls.

We can control our response, though.

We can seek to change all those things by rescuing, educating, and empowering one girl at a time. Going deep to bring healing from trauma and abuse. Redirecting pain and anger into learning skills that will empower their futures. Teaching and showing them that they have inherent worth — and it’s much more than fried chicken or pizza.

Plan International was looking for the “hidden mzungu” who was “secretly” adding funding to our work at Touch the Slum.

Well, that’s YOU! You all are the not-so-hidden mzungus who are giving, encouraging, praying, and even going over to Uganda to keep Touch the Slum going for our teen girls.

We can’t thank you enough!

Mwebele nnyo,

Jennings

PS Here are some buttons for you. We got about 30% of the reviews we need at Great Nonprofits for our 2023 Top Rated Nonprofit award (THANK YOU!), so if you’d like to take 5 min and leave a review, that would be great. We have 2 projects that are over 60% funded on DonorSee, plus some other great project, so you can check those out. And if you aren’t following us on Instagram, head over there to see daily updates!

Oh, and new 2024 tees and sweatshirts are now available!

I’ll leave a review!

DonorSee Projects

Instagram Feed

Uganda Welcomes All Refugees. But…

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Meet Neema, a 14-year-old in our Literacy class. She and her family are refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has been war-torn for some time.

Uganda has a long standing policy of accepting refugees from neighboring countries, which has led to permanent refugee camps and UN offices in Western Uganda. Rwakobo Village, where we just put the well, was founded by Rwandan refugees that the government resettled there — and promptly forgot about.

Neema, her mother, and her 8 siblings live in a mud and stick house in the Namuwongo slum. Her mother has a hard time getting work because she speaks French but very little English, and none of the Ugandan languages but a little Swahili. None of the children have ever been to school.

You can see the problem…

So people are welcomed in, but to unspeakably hard lives. Less hard, perhaps, than their native lands in war, but desperate nonetheless.

Thanks to you all, Neema is learning to read, write, and speak English. This will not just help her, but it will held her mother learn English and be able to get more work. Neema is learning basic math, which will allow her mother to understand Ugandan shillings and know she isn’t being ripped off. When Neema moves to a vocational skill, she will have the ability to help her family buy food and pay rent and all the other things a family of 10 needs every day.

That is life changing for the whole family!

Every day, we can face challenges like Neema’s because we know that you all have our backs. You’re donating, encouraging, giving suggestions, sending people our way… You’re making the difference in entire families, which leads to change in an entire culture.

In short, you’re doing an amazing thing! We can’t thank you enough!

To help Neema’s family with some household items, food, and toiletries, you can donate to her project on DonorSee. Just click the button!

Help Neema’s Family!

Mweble nnyo!

Jennings

PS I am opening up my January trip to Uganda to 3-5 people. If you are someone with a skill or talent that wants to go to Touch the Slum and help teach kids, teach our staff, work with Nurse Sherry, or do social work in the slum, just reply to this newsletter and we can chat further!

Bringing Joy Never Gets Old

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This picture may be our Photo of the Year for 2023 – Monica captured the unadulterated, absolute joy in this family when we surprised them with food, mattresses, household goods, and shoes.

14-year-old Rachelle, one of the students in our Literacy program, lives with her aunt and 7 cousins in a pretty bad part of the slum. (Yes, there are bad parts even in the slum!) While it’s nicer in dry season because they have a little bit of space, it floods in rainy season, and the house is mud-and-stick and not secure or made to last.

The family has virtually nothing to their name. (You can see some videos on Instagram – click the icon below.)

But thanks to a quickly-funded project on DonorSee, we were able to get them things they need – NEED, not just want – and able to surprise them after Rachelle got home from Touch the Slum.

This project was only $375 – to bring food, mattresses, household goods, and shoes for 9 people.

And to bring JOY.

Tears. Running to the team with open arms, shouting thanksgiving, children dancing and crying and laughing all at the same time.

This is what you all do. I know you can’t feel it like my team, or see or smell or experience it. (I so wish you could!) But this is the WHY that you share with us, the simple yet profound ways we can join together to change lives.

Mwebele nnyo,

Jennings

PS We have a large project up for another irrigation tank at the farm. With large projects, they have to be 10% funded to show to the wider DonorSee platform. We’re at 5% — the project total is only $1274 total, so small for a “large” project! Can you help? $65 will get us full exposure so we can get the tank in to help with this dry season.

Bring the water!

When the Ladder Has No Rungs

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14-year-old Rachelle, on the left, lives with her aunt and five other children in a bad part of the Namuwongo slum. (Yes, even in the slum there are bad parts!)

Earlier this month, Rachelle started in our Literacy program, the first time she has ever attended any kind of school. As you can see, she is now beginning to read simple books out loud! Hesitantly, with a little embarrassment, but still — she’s READING.OUT.LOUD. in less than a month!

When we were planning our Literacy program, we knew that most of the girls who came through would have never attended school before, and even those that had would have had only a few terms under their belts. Teen girls are not known for their ability (or desire!) to sit still and be serious — as my mom, Susan, said on our trip a few months ago, “They are JUST like giggling teenage girls everywhere!”

But they are consumed with a desire to learn, to speak English, to read and write and know how to use money (and not be cheated). To be MORE.

Without Touch the Slum, the girls in our program will always only be less-than. They are less than the boys in their family, who get to go to school if there’s the money for it. They are less than the younger children, who get food first because the teens should be able to “go out and get money” (meaning from sex work) if they need incidentals like food and sanitary pads.

They know they are at the bottom of the social ladder — and that, without basic literacy and a skill, that ladder has no rungs.

But YOU believe in them, and so they believe in themselves!

And that’s enough.

Mwebele nnyo!

Jennings

PS Our monthly sanitary pad project for June is 87% funded – we just need $44 to get sanitary pads to 250 girls. If you want to help, click the button!

JUNE SANITARY PADS

PSS The well contractors have still not shown up. (Don’t worry, we haven’t paid them anything except for the surveyor who came twice.) Apparently, they’ve been trying to line up multiple jobs in the region to do back-to-back, but didn’t tell Gideon that until Friday. Our Touch the Slum team took the overnight bus back to Kampala Sunday night, and will return once the trucks are ON SITE! This is Africa…