Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Staff Loans




There are many different branches to the Kibaale Community Centre and a lot of staff needed to run it, right now there are almost 150 staff members! A large number of our staff have spent their entire lives in Kibaale and are not very well off.

Byinda is one of those staff members. He grew up in Kibaale and even went to our school many years ago. He is now 30 years old and his job is to man the main gate and the visitor’s guest book. He makes a very modest salary of around $42 per month. He is the only member of his family who has a steady income. With that money he supports his mother, sisters family, his brothers family and of course his own family. He has one small boy. His newborn daughter died 2 months ago from tetanus.

You can imagine how difficult it is with those circumstances to have spare money to do anything with. His 70 sq ft house was made of mud, and every time it rained, it would start to cave in on him.

One thing we offer to employees is a staff loan. Many people use it to buy cows, or other livestock. But many use it to improve their houses. Byinda was able to build an entire new house with his staff loan! Construction of the new house!
Byinda and his wife in their new home!



Byinda's sister and her children who also live there.





Mom, neices, nephews...




Enjoying a local treat, jackfruit!!

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Nursery Applications

Every November the school and the sponsorship department begin the agonizing task of taking in the nursery school applications. I say agonizing because there are so many needy children and we just can’t accept them all into the school. This year there were 398 applications. The kids that live too far away, are too young or haven’t yet learned how to speak are the ones that don’t go on to the next step. The 398 children were shaved down to just 132. Now it’s up to the sponsorship department to visit their homes and their families to determine which of these kids are the neediest. At the end, we have just 45 spots.

Please pray for our staff in the sponsorship office that has to make these difficult decisions.






Jamie Davis hard at work in the KCF office!!

Friday, November 14, 2008

Special Gifts

Once a month, our child sponsorship program, KCF, gives out special gifts. Special Gifts are purchased by the sponsor back in Canada. They can choose from a wide variety of things from gift baskets, to goats, cows or even gifts as big as water tanks, kitchens or houses for the children ands their families.

Today is gift basket day. The children are SO excited for this. The gift baskets have things in it like soap, toothpaste, salt, sugar and other food items.