DWELLING PLACES ANNUAL REPORT

January – December 2006

Girls’ Home Renovations

HOME ADMINISTRATION

Feeding and General Welfare

New Babies’ Home

We received continual support from the World Food Program (WFP) by means of quarterly food supplies, which included maize, Soya Peas, CSB, cooking oil and beans. It significantly contributed to our budget by allowing us to utilize additional funds towards a more-balanced diet for the children; subsequently, we registered no nutritional challenges with the children in the Transition Rehabilitation Home (TRH)! The WFP has been a tremendous blessing and remarkably supportive.

Our home administrator was able to attend a life skill training workshop organized by WFP and MA- PLAY. As a result, a "World Changers Club" was formed from within the TRH children. Thus far, they have learned three categories of life skills. The club was fortunate enough to receive materials, a banner, Pla-cards, and video, from MA- PLAY to supplement their sessions.  

Donations

We received clothes, shoes, toys, and secondary-school textbooks as gifts-in-kind (G.I.K) from our partners, well-wishers and visitors to the TRH. We are particularly thankful for the McCluskey family for providing sports kits and a new Sunday outfit to each of the 84 TRH children! Our international donors, Bob and Dave Emri, gave $120 towards the purchase of the children’s clothes. Providing clothes for our children, especially teenagers, continue to be a challenge as they are expensive so we greatly benefited from this gift. We're also thankful for the Caltex Uganda for giving the boy’s house a new look after offering to buy paint and then facilitating the repainting. Last but not least, we are also grateful for Africa Bible College and their gift of the secondary-school textbooks.

Childcare

We continually strive to improve the standard of care and protection of each individual child in the TRH. The social welfare, spiritual welfare, health and home administration departments jointly formed a holistic care committee and revived the Holistic Care Program. The 84 TRH children were assigned to different staff members who serve as care parents. The committee, after reviewing the vision, formed care guidelines for both the staff and children. In addition to family time, the children can also express themselves to their respective care parents, thus feeling a sense of protection and care.

Resettlement

Two years ago, toddler Solomon Thomas, was adopted by a Ugandan family. The Social Welfare department has reported that he has slowly assimilated into the family and attends a very nice school.

Currently there are 16 children receiving monthly welfare packages within seven Dwelling Places' care homes. The homes have now stabilized, and most of our children have also assimilated into their homes. Night Aleper was the last child placed into a care home and has since settled in well. Six of our children in the care homes had the opportunity to spend their second term holidays with their biological parents. We are hopeful that this begins a successful on-going process of reconciliation! Unfortunately, there were some disappointing disciplinary actions against some of the children in the care homes, which resulted in their return to the TRH. 

Spiritual Welfare

Apart from the morning and evening prayers, children have continued to actively serve God through our partnership with the local church Showers of Blessings Mutundwe. They're serving on the Worship Team and also participating in Friendship Club and Sunday school.

The Dwelling Places children present a song at Showers of Blessings

Our registry reveals an average of 60 children in weekly attendance at Friendship Club. Because the youth are in the majority, we are planning to develop a Youth Program with Showers of Blessing.

Holidays

The TRH children had three major school holidays throughout the year. Therefore, almost all of the children have been spending their holidays with their parents. This has greatly favoured the on-going process of reconciliation between the children and their parents. We are hopeful that this will pave the way to successful resettlement of children within their families. 

Challenges

We experienced negligence of duty from our security guards despite several warnings. This resulted in the loss of our generator as well as food. The persons responsible were terminated, and we have since hired new security guards.

The children's discipline conduct is gradually improving; however, we are experiencing challenges with some of the children despite the rules, guidelines, and counselling. We will remain committed and unwavering in our guidance and counselling efforts with hopeful expectation of our children becoming responsible citizens.

Health

Throughout the year, the children have generally been in good health condition with the exception of a few reported cases of malaria and chicken pox. Every effort is being made towards sensitising our children on the importance of using mosquito nets.

Our HIV+ teenage girl experienced serious episodes of illness at the beginning of the year, but later recovered with treatment. She has since improved and continues to attend her monthly clinics at the Mildmay Centre.

EDUCATION

Throughout the year, 224 children were supported with in 16 various schools through our education program. The support included paying their school fees, and also provided them with scholastic materials.

The Future is Getting Brighter

Twenty-six of our children were in candidate classes and sat for their final exams last November, while five completed their final year at the advanced level. 2007 will be our first year ever supporting children at the university level. Thirteen children sat for Primary Leaving Examinations (P.L.E.), and eight children sat for their Ordinary level. We are anticipating a good performance.

General Performance

December marks the end of the Uganda mainstream academic year. End of the year reports indicate a great improvement in the general performance of our children. The discipline, regular class attendance, co–curricular activities and mid–term exams contributed to their performance.

Most of the children in lower classes were among the best ten in their respective classes. 

Our teenage girl-Nakato Christine, S.2 City Hill College, received an award as the best actress in the "Music, Dance and Drama Festival."

Search for Better Education Standard

Our TRH children have been relocated from Kitebi Primary School to Agape Infant school after realizing that the standard of the school wasn’t good, as well as the distance to far for the children as we no longer ferry them to and from school.   

Interim School

The highlight of the year was the shifting of the interim school to the boy’s house following the renovations at the girl’s house as reported by the home administration and social welfare departments. Nineteen children were registered in the school for 3 classes last year. Classes included - Baby, Top and standard three. Thirteen were residents in the Transition Rehabilitation Home (TRH), and six were on community bursaries. The decrease in the number of children in the interim school from 2005 reveals that children are well prepared by the interim school for mainstream education. We did encounter a few disciplinary issues with some of our school going children, which were handled with the assistance of school authorities.

PROJECTS AND FUNDRAISING

We were able to achieve many of our fundraising goals for the year. First, we surpassed the desired number of "2000 Dwellers." We concluded the year with 102 members. In the first quarter alone, we collected 910,000/=.

Secondly, the Rebuilders' Choir performed in seven churches and was able to raise a substantial amount of more than 690,000 /= from crafts, CD and audio tape sales.  We also received many gifts-in-kind (G.I.K.).  The performances were excellent advocacy opportunities in which we were able to recruit additional "2000 Dwellers," volunteers for our Herald's Initiative, and secure potential future invitations.

From our two farms in Buloba and Busunju,

we harvested cassava and sweet potato which supplement our rations

from the World Food Program (WFP). We have also acquired our own cow

which produces all of our milk and in turn reduces our budget.

In addition, we sold milk during the school holidays as a source of supplementary income.

SUMMARY

Overall, we were able to achieve many of our goals as

well as overcome unforeseen obstacles.

We managed to remain flexible and prevailed.

2006 was a successful year, and we continue to thank

all of our donors for their support.