Projects

Situation outline

For four years, Tereza Enyumbayo Foundation Organisation in Uganda has been housing and caring for 46 disadvantaged homeless children aged between 6 and 18 years under the Awaka project. They now live in a large building (see the photo below), with 2 attendants and 2 farm workers. 

 

We want to develop better living conditions by building five foster homes on the property. The current situation is that children grow up in an institutional environment. We want to change that to homes where they can grow up in smaller groups, guided by foster parents. In such a situation, the children experience what it is like to be in a family. In discussion with Rob Hondsmerk and others we decided to see what we can do for these kids.

 

This project is about realizing foster homes. Besides the fact that this will give the children better living conditions, it also creates opportunities with the large building. This is another project that is starting to take root. 

 

The large building and site, after the foster homes are completed, was to be developed into a children's recreation centre. We have already taken steps to achieve that by setting up a camping garden and a play park. This recreation centre will allow each year over 1,000 children to attend camps where they learn to be a disciple, play, have fun and enjoy the love of Christ. In part because of this, participating children can return home as ambassadors of Jesus and spread that same love to their families and communities.

 

We have already started opening up the place to the community in order to raise some income. This, however, causes some friction since the children are still living in the structure. It has therefore become urgent that we start the construction of the foster homes so that the children vacate their current premises.

 

The Plan

We, therefore, intend to build five foster homes and spread out these children in these homes. 

The fully furnished 3-bedroomed houses with a garden will averagely have 8 children and their foster parents. We believe in the nurturing that only a family environment with a mother and/or father can offer a child to grow up wholesomely and be discipled to become an ambassador of hope through Jesus. The foster parents will be empowered and mentored to disciple these children with the help of the local church.

We found potential foster parents through the church and others attended our training on Kingdom leadership. We have found them suitable for this task. They come from poor financial backgrounds but are sound-minded, are Christian which is visible in their way of life.  There is great confidence that they will work with us to raise these children Christianly into responsible adults who can make wise choices. Before we involve these foster parents in the work, we will organize several trainings in cooperation with HiKidz International so that they are well prepared theoretically, practically, mentally and emotionally.

 

The foster parents will be given a 60 Euro monthly allowance for foster care and an opportunity to educate 2 biological children at our school. The foster care allowance has been budgeted for initially one year, after which we should have another funding source.

 

Final responsibility falls to TEFO together with HiKidz International. Therefore, we shall make regular routine visits to make adjustments as needed and offer advice, encouragement and guidance in dealing with the various emotional/psychological needs of the children. There are opportunities to involve some local social workers as volunteers in our work. So, TEFO will continually visit and supervise the homes to ensure that the children are happy and comfortable and that they are being discipled to become ambassadors of Christ.

 

Alternative plan due to urgency

Due to the current situation where funds are not readily available to build all the five homes at once, we thought of a quicker way to implement by building one house at a time in five different phases. When one house is ready, we shall start releasing the children in the first phase. 

 

Expected impact and outcomes

The foster homes will give the children an opportunity to rise above their damaged past and create a desire in them to have a family of their own when they grow up. For the very first time, these children will experience warmth, love, care, support, comfort, trust and acceptance by living in a family situation. This helps them process their past and grow up into stable, responsible adults who can make good choices.

 

Because there is no money to help the children, the government's policy is that these children must be taken care of by their families. Usually, the family is poor and therefore it happens very often that the young girls are married off to older men who pay the family a dowry. For the boys in this situation, very often they end up in child labour so that their family has income. Through the foster homes, these children can be saved from child marriages and child labour by the family they will end up in.

 

These foster homes will become our reference point for training stable families to take in needy children who might otherwise end up in an orphanage.  In doing so, we hope and pray that through this work we can help these children become a stable, faithful generation of significance in the community where they live.

As the 46 children gradually grow and leave their homes, we plan to create more opportunities for more needy children.

 

Sustainability

We plan to work with Enterprise Uganda to skill the prospective families so that they can all set up a small business. They will be trained in selecting the right enterprise like poultry keeping, vegetable gardening, and crafts and then trained in small business management. Thereafter, the families will each receive a cash grant of 300 Euros broken down into two installments to facilitate them to start a small family business of their choice. This business will be closely monitored for 12 months or less, after which it should be stable to run and support the family with basic requirements.

Children will learn to become self-sufficient because they will learn the business of their foster home.

 

We shall establish and run skills training in employable skills such as tailoring to impart market-oriented skills to the older children to generate income.

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Local Income

Kamuli district in Eastern Uganda is one of the poorest districts with the highest number of poor people. Therefore, most of our activities do not generate local income. Unfortunately, we cannot raise the funds locally to finance this much-needed development. In the near future, when the children's recreation center starts functioning normally, we hope to generate some income from the activities that will be done at the center, as these will attract children and adults from near and far away places who can afford the cost of using the services at the center.

 

The Ugandan government does not have a budget to facilitate the needs of the country’s over 2 million orphans. This is why organizations like TEFO step in to close the gap. Unfortunately, the government does not support needy children except by providing free universal education, which currently has many challenges. 

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Artistic impression view of one home