What we're up to

For some time now we have had the continent of Africa on our hearts, and particularly orphaned children there. We have felt strongly that we want to do something, but in the right way and at the right time. Over the last 5 years we have travelled to Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, Lesotho and Mozambique, visiting various projects that have helped communities and children. This has given us an even clearer idea as to what works well, and what values we think are important.

Our goal is for people to re-discover their God given dignity, follow their dreams...
and flourish. 

And we feel that now is the right time to live in Africa.

We are joining with the work of the charity Revelation Life, who work in several 'slum communities'. They are a new charity, but have set up various projects and are doing all sorts of great things, they also have really strong relationships with members of the community.

Their vision is to work in three areas: spiritual growth, by praying with people, sharing God's love and supporting small groups; aid and relief, giving medical help and emergency relief in family crisis situations and community development work, supporting the community to solve their own challenges in the long term.

We are helping with the last of these three - community development. Part of what we mean by this is summed up by the saying, 'give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll eat for life'. Except, we want to take it further and see people start to learn to organise themselves and learn all sorts of skills with mini-enterprises happening in the communities. People will then train others up in new skills; whether that's making money from basket weaving, or growing vegetables. And we aim to make links with local experts, poor farmers and organisations that are already doing great stuff in this area; we see ourselves very much as facilitators. This is all very important stuff, as life expectancy is low and childhood mortality is really high in the slums, plus 60% or Uganda's urban population live in slums areas. So, we would love to learn and then develop an approach that can be useful for people elsewhere too.

The other huge, and exciting, part of what we are going to be doing is to develop 'the land' project. The charity has bought some land on a hill to be a place for orphans from the slums to grow up in loving Ugandan families. This is wonderful, and we see it as a place where children who are at extreme risk, with no other options for staying in the community, can receive love, care and enjoy their childhoods. Of course, they'll need an education too and we aim to give them all sorts of useful skills. Growing their own food is a good start as over 70% of Ugandans rely on their land for food. Then there are all sorts of other ways we can help them grow up to feel confident about their futures, from making sure they know they are loved to helping them to pursue their passions.

We've got a lot to learn and a long way to go, but our aim in all of this is to help children and families to flourish and work towards their dreams.