Children

The team went into Kampala today to shop for Children of promise gifts. Wow what an experience. Wall to wall shops of clothing of all sorts and in what can only be described as a huge three and four story building/ warehouse where hundreds of owner operated businesses try to yek out a daily wage to feed their families. Some of us got to meet with our children with them seeing their sponsors getting great big smiles and running to their open arms with huge hugs. NO ONE CAN EVER SAY WE ARE NOT MAKING A DIFFERENCE BY SUPPORTING THESE KIDS.
The sad part of the day was sitting in traffic and having the street children come up to the van and ask for money for food. I am not talking about teenagers but children who looked to be around the age of 5 or 6. If only they had sponsors then they might have a place to live and sleep and be loved and care for. I can not even imagine my children at that age and now my grandchildren ever living in such conditions.
Hundreds of orphaned children roam the streets of Uganda’s capital. Most have drifted in from rural areas – mainly northern Uganda, a region blighted by decades of civil war. Some are former child soldiers and the rest come from nearby slum areas following family breakdown – through HIV/AIDS, poverty and domestic violence. Almost all the children on the streets are using drugs and, over time, most boys resort to theft and many girls become prostitutes.The biggest fear for every street child is alienation – having nowhere to belong, no friends, no family.
Pray that God will keep providing for the project’s needs as it grows and reaches out to the huge numbers of children on Kampala’s streets. Issues facing children in Uganda
Malaria, respiratory infections and diarrhea are the main causes of under-5 mortality. Approximately 20,000 babies are infected by HIV annually through mother-to-child transmission.
Nearly half of the estimated 2 million orphans are orphaned due to AIDS, with the total expected to rise to 3.5 million by 2010.
Net primary school attendance has risen to 87 percent.
Children and women comprise 80 percent of the 1.4 million people forced to flee their homes due to conflict. They live in more than 200 camps, with limited services.
The LRA has abducted more than 25,000 children since 1986.
In the conflict-affected districts, around 40,000 unaccompanied children the ‘night commuters walk every night from their homes in outlying villages to urban centers, in search of protection from the threat of LRA abductions and attacks

Breaks your heart you too can help one child at a time sponsor a child