MARCH 2012 NEWSLETTER

Thank you so much for your continuing support. We hope you will enjoy reading a little about the work of Spring of Hope.

 

Schools work

SOH currently work alongside Mount Zion and Kisega Primary Schools. We have 20 children sponsored at these schools; our heart is to see that these children learn vocational skills.

 

The start of school year has just begun; the children are thoroughly enjoying their new term, they have already had a team from Canada visit them, where they had a sports and craft morning. We are excited to see some new initiatives, so we far we have seen five more children sponsored (we still have a long waiting list please see our website for more information regarding children who need a sponsor). For Some time, we have wanted to develop the education for children with learning disabilities and learning difficulties. We are excited as this is now the season for this to happen through the help of Erin Powel. A volunteer special needs education teacher from the USA working with us until July. She will be working with these children and training staff in this area. We are excited to see where this will end up.

Parish clinics

 

In January after three years of dreaming and waiting until the right time, we started Parish clinics. Over the last few years we have come to realise why cannot home visit all the 600 children we work with. So why not bring the services of Spring of Hope to where the children are. In Kangulumira, there is 6 parishes each made up of 6 villagers. In January, we went to Seeta Parish and in February, we went Kawoomya parish and Nakuntundu. We were surprised by the attendance, which was 58 in Seeta and 72 in Kawoomya. Our plan is to focus on hosting two clinics which will involve four parishes until our funds increase then move onto all 6 parishes and 6 clinics.  The kids had various types of disabilities: physical, cognitive disabilities, Epilepsy, hearing impairments, ADHD, and various other needs.  One of the major challenges we are finding is stigma, many of these families who have never been reached before have a very negative attitude towards their children. This is confirming what we are doing is very much needed.

 

A taste of SoHUG

 

Home visiting From Monday, Tuesday and Friday we go out and visit children in the local communities and we do occupational and physiotherapy therapy work. Each day we try to see three children, the idea of home visiting is helping a parent to know how to enable its child to reach its true potential the majority of our home visiting are children who are totally dependent on their parent and their parent needs to know they are not alone and through exercise their child can achieve much more than once believed.

 

Activities of daily living is a program of empowering children who are less dependant upon their parents but are needing to learn independent living skills.  The children we see through this are children who in time can learn to independent.  Many parents need to see that their child can peel matooke(food) or wash their clothes before believing they can. Much of our time is spent encouraging a parent and teaching a parent how to get their child actively involved in daily life. In the past we have had parents amazed that their can be actively in daily activities of family life where the parent never believed they could atain such skills.

Clinics – twice a month we hold clinics: Wabwoko Village 150 patients + 100 in our local office. This covers assessing needs of the children, advising the patients and giving out medication. We also teach health skills and basic knowledge skills of life. Parents sometimes delay bringingtheir child to a clinic; unfortunately few parents bring their child every month.

 

We work with them so they understand that it takes commitment to see changes in their child’s life. Many parents are still looking for a one off miracle of healing in the lives of their child Instead for example of learning how to manage the epilepsy. Slowly parents are learning the importance of managing their childs epilepsy.

 

Drop in day Every Thursday we run a drop in clinic where parents come to the office for physiotherapy. They are taught how to carry out the exercise. By bringing the parents together, they learn more and are able to support one another. We believe it is not the work we do which makes a difference but the skills we teach and empower the parents to have. Bringing parents together, helps the parents to learn from one another and realise that they are not alone often a parent believes she is the only person who has a child with a disability later she meets other parents and her love and understanding of her child grows. On average we receive around 20 parents with children with disabilities.

Some new online initiatives for Spring of Hope Uganda

• Spring of hope newly updated website www.springofhope.org.uk
• Our SOH Merchandise shop where you can buy a T-shirt or mug to support the work we do here in Uganda  http://www.cafepress.co.uk/springofhope - even if you’re not living in the UK you can buy a Tshirt in your currency and get it posted with any extra charge.
• We now have a wish list of equipment which is needed for our children in Uganda – please check out http://www.wishlistr.com/spring-of-hope-uganda
• Lots of new stories on the SOH blog www.springofhopeuganda.blogspot.com

How to support SoH

You can support this vital work :

Financially on line: 

www.sohug.givengain.org

UK Tax payers

www.cafonline.org

or

www.stewardship.org.uk

Account No 20041306

or on how to send a check or cash please contact us.

Volunteer opportunities

• in Uganda
• Where you live by fund raising
• buying our merchandise and promoting the cause through www.cafepress.co.uk/springofhope
• Prayer.
• child sponsorship- new school sponsorship list on th website
• monthly giving
• Become an activist on www.givengive.com

  

Wishing you a very Happy 2012

 

From everyone at

Spring of Hope

PARISH CLINICS

We recently started our Parish Clinics (village zone) in January 2012.  A  Parish is part of a sub county, within each sub county there are approximately 6 parishes, each parish has approximately six villages.  The idea of a Parish Clinic has been on the heart of Teresha for three years. One of the difficulties SOH found over the years has been trying to reach all the children through home visiting. Teresha felt bringing the children together from the villages near to where they lived would help more children receive the services SOH offers.

We started by having a meeting with the local village leaders, this meeting was multi-purpose aiming to:

·         sensitize the leaders regarding disabilities

·         mobilize the leaders to reach their villages

·         enable us to start the parish clinics. 

An emphasis was put on reaching those kids who were tied up, mistreated, or not given the necessities of life.  In Uganda, kids with disabilities are often not seen as children and often mistreated. 

The Parish Clinics consist of:

·         a short Bible message using puppets,

·         providing knowledge and skills to parents,

·         Offering spiritual support to parents. 

We are targeting four Parishes and plan to meet once a month with the Parishes.  After the first meeting with each parish, we will combine two parishes together.  Each Parish will have a parent’s committee made up of a representative of each village within the Parish.  The aim is that the parent committees will take ownership over the clinics and let Spring of Hope know the difficulties the parents are facing and how we can help the children of their village.  Our aim is to see that the village representatives will follow up on the families in their local community and offer a listening ear.

One of focuses of the clinics is to train the parents. The training will  focus on educating and empowering parents so they can empower their child.  We will target kids who have physical disabilities in one group and kids who need support in daily living skills in the other group. We believe without training parent’s children cannot reach their true potential.

 

First parents managment comittee

These clinics are so exciting for various reasons!  They provide a chance to change the view of people with disabilities, to alter society’s views on people with disabilities.  Furthermore, they give parents ideas on how they can help their child.  Parents will need to take the information and adapt it to their own child’s needs.  Through this process we hope to instill the idea that their child can learn and they can be a teacher to their child. The Parish Clinic allows Spring of Hope to reach more people with the resources currently available.  Another powerful benefit is that parents can meet other parents to support and help each other in raising their child with disabilities.  We are excited to see how the clinics evolve and help children, families, and communities!

We have so far hosted two Parish Clinics at two different locations.  The first training involved sharing the message of creation and how God created man in His image.  The message was extended to the fact that God also created people with disabilities.  We then started working on developing positive views towards people with disabilities.  Within the training we emphasized the fact that people with disabilities have potential, can learn, and that they do not have a disability due to witchcraft or curses, and that they need to be treated like any child who does not have a disability, and are loved by God. 

Then we educated parents about Spring of Hope and the aims of the Parish Clinics.  Following the informative session we registered new and old clients.  At the first Parish we had 41 kids and had 71 at the second Parish Clinic.  The kids had various types of disabilities: physical, cognitive disabilities, Epilepsy, hearing impairments, ADHD, and various other needs.  Some of the kids were referred to the clinic, as their condition was medical and not a disability.  These first two clinics were a success, as we were able to reach many people, both current and new clients of Spring of Hope!

We would love to cover all six parishes in Kangulumira, please help us by donating to parish clinics.

January photo up date

January has been a month of many changes, 2012 for us here at Spring of Hope already feels like we are moving to the next level of growth and development.


January month started with an awareness campaign on disabilities, Parish clinics have been established and now we are able to reach to more communities than before this has led to establishment of developing new relationships with the local sub county of Kangulumira.

Awareness Campaign Friday 6th January

Mothers share their stories of having a child with a disability.

Mama Safina sharing her story with Safina on her lap

mama waswa sharing her story of raising waswa a boy with cerebral palsy

local leaders listening and learning

Home Visiting

Martin with our Occupational Therapist intern carrying out assessment

Daniel the Occupation Therapist assisting Zechariah at home

turning steps into a ramp, to ensure zechariah can work into the house without falling

Visting Amina and Mama Amina one our deaf children

reading a card to mama ruth in luganda whilst Ruth reads the card. 

 Drop in clinics

Therapy can be fun

Fred was able to be discharged, due to the fact he can now walk

Parish clinics 

The 25th of january 2012 was the first day we hosted our first parish clinic in one of the six parishes of kangulumira or vision is to have a clinic in every parish in Kangulumira. In the last few years we have realised that by just home visiting not every child is seen. So by starting parish clinics we can ensure that the children are seen and the parents recieve the right guidance which is needed for them to empower their child. During our first clinic  we recieve 58 children. We are looking forward to returning to this parish in march!! 

Mama Amina sharing her testiomoney of having a child with a disability and how SOHUG has helped her

Erin sharing the story of creation using a puppet

Explaining how spring of hope works and how we can help children with disabilities

parents and children at the parish clinic

Erin speaking on disability awareness

A girl with burns over her face due to acid burning, we now looking at how to raise money for her surgery

Formation of Parents management committee 

We believe that if they parents own the work of spring of hope in the community more of a difference is made and it will not just be us doing the work. We are excited to see what will come out of parents management committees. Our hope is they will become self suitable and they will register as an association and they might be able to apply for local grants which are available to parent associations in the district this will help with income generating and poverty aradication within their own familes.SoHug is looking for ways to develop these parent committees long term to enable the parents be able take care of their disabled children.

Each parent was asked to vote for the person they wished to represent them in their village

Our first parents management comittee, chairman and community councilors

Visting Teams

This month we have blessed with two teams from Canada one who helped us with the clinic in wabwoko. This was a very active clinic with lots of activities for the children from football to drawing pictures as well as the usual activities of physiotherapy and epilespy treatment.

The second team came to our office in Kangulumira and tranformed the garage into an OT room, we have been using a  very small space as our Occupational Therapy room. We were unable to comfortable host more than two parents in the room, we are now comfortable able to host 10 children in the OT room. 

The team helping us to count epilespy medication in wabwoko

Drop in day with the help of visitors

Painting on the wall of the Occupational Therapy room, making it fun for the children.

Making sensory mobiles

One of the many pictures which were painted onto the wall of our new Occupational Therapy room

The amazing team who transformed the garage into an Occupational Therapy room