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Helping moms & babies in Uganda

You are changing the lives of moms and babies. Here’s how.

Mom's & BabiesMom's & Babies
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The Need

Of the 5.2 million children who die around the world each year, 75 per cent die in the first year of life. Babies are at risk of death due to premature birth complications, complications during childbirth, infections, pneumonia and diarrhea. But this is preventable. With training and support, moms in poverty can be empowered to raise healthy and happy babies.

Our Response

Critical care
Your support helps secure access to pre- and postnatal care, skilled birth attendants and medical intervention when necessary.

Home-based care
Mothers are visited in their homes monthly by a Survival specialist, who offers education in prenatal care and early child-rearing as well as one-on-one biblical mentoring.

Group-based learning
At these church-based activities, moms learn skills to earn an income and gain vital knowledge including basic literacy, the importance of breastfeeding and how to prevent malnutrition and disease. These groups combat isolation through a supportive community of mothers who, together, learn about the God who loves them.

Uganda Stats

Average number of children in household 5
Average age of first-time mothers 20
Births attended by skilled health personnel 59
Stunted growth from malnutrition 34

Activities

Income generation: Caregivers gained valuable skills to support their families through income generation workshops. In Rubirizi-Nyarushanje, moms toured an agricultural institute where they learned modern and urban farming techniques and how to maintain banana and other crops. Moms in Agururu B Village learned hairdressing, tailoring and financial management skills and joined savings groups to improve financial stability. Dads learned skills such as making liquid soap. In Burema, moms also learned tailoring skills.

Spiritual nurture: Staff supported caregivers’ spiritual growth through devotionals, prayer, worship and Bible lessons. Moms enjoyed spending time together, singing and encouraging each other as they learned more about biblical principles. Several caregivers accepted and confessed Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Saviour. Staff also provided personal spiritual support during home visits. Caregivers enjoyed service activities such as mudding a house, tidying a playground and cleaning up a community well spring.

Celebrations: Caregivers gathered at the centres to celebrate children’s birthdays and special occasions together. Birthday parties fostered a sense of love, value and belonging to a caring and supportive community. These celebrations brought great joy and smiles to the participants.

Education: During group meetings and home visits, caregivers learned lessons on topics like child protection and domestic violence, safe childbirth, healthy relationships and communication, the importance of play for young children, nutrition and balanced diets, making rehydration serums and personal hygiene practices. Moms and dads also attended literacy classes to gain crucial reading and writing skills.

Child development: Moms learned to play different games with their babies to promote their physical, emotional and cognitive growth. Moms enjoyed watching their children grow and explore as they played with age-appropriate toys at their local Compassion centres. Staff taught caregivers the importance of regularly talking to and singing with their children and responding to their cries.

Health and nutrition: Staff distributed monthly food baskets to Survival families, so caregivers could prepare nutritious and affordable meals to strengthen their immune systems. Babies were weighed and measured regularly to track their growth and development and moms and babies had regular medical checkups. If needed, they received medications, supplements and vitamins. Moms in Rukungiri-Nyarushanje were screened for high blood pressure and diabetes. In Agururu B Village, moms learned how to recognize, prevent and treat malaria and each family received two treated mosquito nets.

Project Stats

This intervention addressed:

Full-term births 6
Illness: Respiratory-Related Illness 2
Illness: Gastrointestinal Diseases 1
Pregnancies 1
Illness subc: Respiratory Tract Infection 1
Illness: Preventable Diseases 1
Breastfeeding Moms 4
Malnourished Babies - Severely Underweight 25
Attended births 5
Malnourished Babies - Moderately Underweight 25
Normal birth weights 6
Pastor Kobusingye, UG0578

ReportA message from a pastor

I am Pastor Kobusingye, overseer at the Burema Child and Youth Development Centre at Burema Full Gospel Church, who ministers to Survival program participants. The Burema Child and Youth Development Centre is in the southwestern region of Uganda, in Kanungu District within Burema Village. It is a rural area with a population made up of various tribes, including the Bakiga, Banyankole and Batwa people. The community speaks different languages and has diverse religious affiliations.

Our church vision is to ensure that all people come to know Jesus Christ and are brought closer to Him and have a strong relationship with Him on a personal level. We hope to help more caregivers recognize Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. Our program’s vision is to help participants grow socially, spiritually, economically and cognitively, so they can become reliable leaders in their communities.

I am so grateful for your love, care and support that you have shown for the children and caregivers in the Survival and home-based programs. Your great support has improved their standards of living. The Survival program currently supports both fathers and mothers, and we believe this will have a significant impact on child-rearing and family life. I also wish to inform you that we currently have 20 participants in the Survival program and 56 children in the home-based program. Many of these children older than one year old have received sponsors, and we are truly happy. This fills our hearts with peace and joy.

Your continued support has made a huge impact in transforming the lives of many people here in southwestern Uganda, especially in the Burema community. Your care has revealed God’s love and healing to the broken-hearted, and surely your labour is not in vain, as 1 Corinthians 15:58 says.

Many caregivers in the program have testified to being transformed, and we are very hopeful that their children will indeed grow to become outstanding citizens in the future. The caregivers have accepted Christ as their Lord and Saviour. They have also received medical care and through health screenings, sensitizations and promotion of general hygiene, their health has greatly improved. Caregivers actively participate in health workshops on topics like disease prevention and proper nutrition. Mothers have also been empowered through skills training such as tailoring and baking so that it can improve their livelihoods. Both fathers and mothers who are not able to read and write are undergoing functional adult literacy classes, which they enjoy.

My prayer and hope are that our children may grow up knowing God. I pray that they will become great people who can, in turn, help lift their parents out of the struggles they are going through now. I continually pray for God’s mercy and grace to be upon their families. May God richly bless the work of your hands, and may His peace abide in you forever.

Yours in Christ,

Pastor Kobusingye, UG0578
Annet

ReportA message from those your gift helped

Golden greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I wish to extend my gratitude to you for the love and great support you have given to us. My name is Annet, and I am 22 years old. I live with my husband Julius and our three children. We live in a two-roomed house. My child Justine is now seven months old.

We live in Chaminula village in Tororo District in the Eastern region of Uganda. This area is densely populated, where people mainly earn their living from growing vegetables. I have one calf and one chicken. I am a housewife and just do casual work like digging in people’s gardens. My husband also digs in gardens to earn a living for our family. He also helps his friends dig their gardens.

I have been blessed by the program staff. They are good people. I enjoy the Survival program because of the staff—they are such a blessing to our entire family. They teach many things like how to respect our husbands, how to take care of our children, the importance of breastfeeding our babies for at least six months and family planning methods to ensure we have prepared well. We also learn about good nutrition for our families, safe motherhood, the importance of play, managing diarrhea and preventing malaria, to mention but a few. These teachings have changed my marriage and my entire family.

Justine is healthy because of the nutritional supplements we get every month, including eggs, milk, millet flour and silver fish. This has boosted her so much, and her weight has kept on increasing. I hope that my daughter will become an engineer in the future. Both Justine and I have received good medical care from the support from the Compassion Survival program, which has greatly improved our health status. I am also learning hairdressing skills to help us boost our standard of living.

We have benefited a lot from the program from things like baby clothes, napkins, blankets, bed sheets, soap, basins, flasks, an umbrella, a mattress and many more items. This has helped us as a family live a better life compared to the state we were in before joining the program and we really thank God.

I wish to extend my appreciation to our loving sponsors who support us in such a wonderful way. I will always pray for you and for God’s blessing to you all.

May God bless you and watch over your families and give you long life. Thank you for changing our lives and putting a smile on our faces.

With much love,

Annet
Paul

ReportA message from a partnership facilitator

Receive greetings in the name of Jesus Christ. I give thanks to the Lord for the enabling grace to release children from poverty. My name is Paul, the Partnership Facilitator of Tororo Butaleja area and I want to express my deepest gratitude for the invaluable support you have given us as a church in bringing about holistic child development in our community. Your kindness and generosity have made an immense difference in the lives of many Survival children and caregivers.

The impact of your support goes beyond the financial; it has allowed us to impact lives in the areas of education, health and sensitization in positive parenting, domestic violence prevention, child protection, family planning, life values, marriage counselling, skills development and Christian discipleship. This has restored hope and faith in many lives. Now, even some parents who are not in the program come to church to consult on how to handle domestic violence as they hear and see testimonies of support to our mothers in the communities.

Your support has brought smiles to the beneficiaries and changed many lives in the community. One child beneficiary registered in the program with severe malnutrition but through regular health screenings and nutritional support, the child is now very healthy and will be ready to start school soon. Another participant, whose father suffered from multiple disabilities such as physical, mental and speech struggles, now has a successful business selling eggs and can support his family. A young mother in our program has also had her life changed thanks to your generosity. She has been motivated to strive for success and she is now back to school, finishing her education.

Many mothers have had training in various skills: tailoring skills for 20 mothers; hairdressing for 26 mothers; and business training for 20 mothers such as selling second hand clothes, farming and agriculture, retail shops and street vending. Their new skills and education have changed the lives of their families to the extent that they no longer need support from the church. All of this and more is attributed to your kind support of the Survival program.

I thank God for you and pray that He will bless all your efforts and all that you are involved in. I pray that He sustains you in His power.

Paul