Your gifts for African kids!

We have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to become involved in a couple charities in Africa - and with this involvement, the people of Africa have blessed our lives with friendship and fulfillment.  

Instead of wedding gifts/money, we are asking for donations that will continue to change the lives of vulnerable children in Africa.

We plan to use this money in three ways:
1) Understand and execute the best way to create a self-funded model to support teacher's salaries and operation in Uganda for KACCAD's Faith Children's Foundation School and Orphanage (see below). The initial hope is to help build a poultry farm.

2) Provide funds to allow distribution of solar lighting to rural households in Uganda.

3) Help KanyeKanye (see bottom), a South African charity, launch a new brand called HEADLINES, which drives awareness and revenues for the employment and leadership modules for young adults transitioning from the orphanage to life on their own.  An additional benefit is the training and employment has an environmental focus for up-cycling various materials.

Below are additional details, photos and videos of these charities (if you read nothing else, please don't skip Fred Isaac's adorable letter to us):

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Kyosiga Community Christian Association for Development (KACCAD) is a Ugandan NGO focused on assisting the local communities in various aspects.  We spent a week with them in 2016 helping refurbish Faith Children's Foundation School and working with the kids.  We were so touched by the experience, we have gone back 2 more times to visit and we continue to support KACCAD and several children.  

Areas of their involvement:

- Education through sponsorship to orphans and vulnerable children.  Including operating Faith Children's Foundation School and Orphanage and identifying business ideas to create self-sustaining ways to fund the operation of the school (including teachers' salaries).

- Providing solar lights to huts/homes in the rural areas to reduce their reliance on expensive and dangerous kerosene.  The simple addition of solar lighting reduces the risk of fire (a major killer), reduces chronic medical conditions relating to inhalation of fumes, improves the children's school results as they can study into the evening, and reduces unplanned pregnancies as parents don't just go to bed when it gets dark ;-)

- Providing mosquito nets to households to help prevent malaria.

- Transforming rural medical clinics to have solar electricity in order to serve the community in the evening for emergencies and child birth.

Website for KACCAD:
http://www.volunteerkaccad.org

Some photos and videos of our experiences:

Keith working hard at waterproofing the roof at Faith Children's Foundation School, so he could then help paint the classrooms and building  to make a much better learning environment.

Keith taking a break with the kids:

During the renovation work when their classrooms were unavailable, Alice worked with Teacher Betty keeping the kids busy with singing, dancing and games:

Fred Isaac is an underprivileged child that Alice and her Mom sponsor.  Here is a  picture of him along with his family, plus a letter written after his first term at Light Primary School (boarding school).  Incidentally, now his little sister and brother are also sponsored and join him at the same school.  They are fortunate to have their mother, Doroth, to help care for them during school breaks, though their father was killed in a car accident three years ago:

Nazifa, a 15-year old orphan who we take care of,  from a recent trip to Murchison Falls, Uganda:

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KanyeKanye (thankfully not related to the rapper!) is our other favorite charity, based in Johannesburg, South Africa, where our awesome friend, Bianca Van Wyngaard, heads up a program that provides programs for kids leaving orphanages and welfare homes, teaching them skills to allow them to work instead of going back onto the street.  These skills focus on collecting recyclable materials and up-cycling them to make clothes, furniture, bags and other items.    

Since 2017, they have collaborated with upcoming fashion designer Lungi Sokulu, and developed the brand HEADLINES – a range of products made from rolled and woven newspaper.  They’ve proved that they can scale the production capacity for HEADLINES, by training 22 people from disadvantaged communities to make HEADLINES components, within 6 weeks.  Their latest initiative to help launch the HEADLINES brand is showcasing a dress made from recyclable materials for South Africa's Miss Earth to wear in an international event in July, 2018.  It is this launch that we will be helping to fund.

Here are some photos of the fabulous items HEADLINES are producing:


And see some of the other funky stuff that they create on their Facebook page:  https://www.facebook.com/FOOP-ville-876870505711677/

Finally, here is an informative video (focusing on one of their corporate sponsors), showing more details of their operations:


We hope that these photos, videos and stories inspire you as they have us.  And thank you for passing your blessings on to these wonderful charities and amazing children!  

And little Robert, from Faith Children's, says thank you too! :-)