How do you measure hope?

8 months ago, we returned from Uganda, today we’re heading back. It’s the first time we’ve been twice in one year. Our heavy cases are packed with gifts and letters, useful items like sanitary kits for teenage girls and beanbags for play times, and a few clothes. It was cold in the South in February when the rains came – this time I’m taking a jacket and fleece jumper. I’m both excited and slightly anxious. What are we going to find? Will we be able to help the local staff?

Visiting Uganda in March was the most exhausting, challenging, encouraging and exciting overseas trip I’d made with Global Care.  Our eighth trip to Uganda, I thought we’d seen the worst living conditions and most desperate situations.  I was wrong.  In Rukungiri in the South West, in rural and remote locations, the limitations for children with mobility difficulties, and the effect on their families was heart-breaking.  Over three days, hot and dusty, we climbed hills, crossed streams on rotting planks, and trekked through ‘bush’.  At the end of the hike, we’d find a small traditional mud and wattle house with a grass-thatched roof, home to a family with a child with disabilities. No electricity. No running water.  Families struggled to survive in such harsh environments, walking miles for clean water and trying to cultivate land for food.  Able-bodied children walk several kilometres to school. Children with disabilities are isolated and confined to home, regular school attendance an impossible dream.  It rained on day four, the tracks turned to flooded muddy quagmires.  We wept for families without hope.

In Soroti in the North, we visited a Playscheme and a Disability Support Group. We met children who hadn’t been out of their houses for years, children who were beaten by neighbours and called ‘mad’, children who’d never played, seen a school or met other disabled children. We talked to Mums who said they couldn’t work because their children couldn’t be left at home. In February the Playscheme had just started. 24 children and 3 volunteers were learning to trust each other, to play, and to work out how to help the children know self-worth and understand their value.

Over the summer a team of special needs teachers visited Uganda, and spent a week training local staff and volunteers. Their trip provided resources and ideas – and the only opportunity this group of people had for any training.

Over the year we’ve been delighted and amazed as children and families received hope for a better future – thanks to Global Care, the teachers’ trip, and the tireless work of our friends and heroes, the local Ugandan staff. In Rukungiri children received mobility aids, special chairs and welfare care. Some children received transport to school, fees and lunch. Accessible toilets have been built at 3 schools. Children at the Playscheme have learnt to walk, to feed themselves, to play – and know there are many people who think they are worth time and money!

Both brilliant projects. So… They’re doing a fantastic job without us - why are we going out? We love and support Global Care not just for the work they do and the lives they change, but for their accountability and desire to learn lessons and not repeat mistakes. Evaluation is key to any project – and ensuring local reporting is high quality and appropriate. We’re going back to review the last 9 months – to help local staff measure what’s happening against the outcomes set at the start of the project. To understand and report on why chicken farming and bee keeping didn’t work for one group, and why constructing accessible latrines to a national specification is so difficult for local builders... and to continue training local staff in project management and evaluation.  

I can’t wait to see the children again, to hear their stories and understand how much these projects have changed their lives. I’m also ready to hear where things haven’t worked and support staff as they look for solutions and alternative ways of working. We want to be open and ready to hear honest feedback from families – are these projects really changing their children’s lives? How have their lives changed? We have to be ready for negative feedback and for some lateral thinking.

I’m delighted to be seeing our friends again soon – and looking forward to working and relaxing with them.  Rainy season isn’t the best time to receive visitors and take them to remote villages, so we’re praying for reasonable weather and that we can be a blessing and help, not an annoying addition to their already busy lives.

We’ll post blogs as often as possible wifi permitting. No swimming for me for three weeks – my life moves over to this blog!

See you on the other side….