NEWS NEWS NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Preparing an HIV/AIDS testing and counselling  session for kibuye village on Tuesday the 2nd of August!It will be facilitated by THE AIDS SUPPORT ORGANISATION Jinja,  together with AASU volunteers, about 200 people will get to know their status!

Will keep you up dated on this event, we are excited!!!!

SHARON’S BLOG.

I know it has been a while since we last updated the blog. Arise and Shine Uganda has been going through a lot of changes. And it is still adjusting to these changes at the moment. Our web site and face book page had to be deleted due to some technical problems that were associated with their formation. But we are glad to announce that our web site will be coming on line very soon and the domain name is already purchased as www.ariseandshineug.org. We also have a new face book page as arise and shine Uganda. Feel free to join and like it, if you have been previously following us on there. I have to say that all is well. In this Blog we bring both good and bad news. Beginning with the bad news.

A few weeks ago, baby Brian came to live with us at A rise and Shine children’s home. He was sick with a terrible oral thrush and cough. On his first night with us, we took him to the hospital just to make sure he got some treatment as he was not breathing easily. The doctor gave us sad news after his check up. He said that little Brian would not make it as the thrush had spread all over his insides. We choose not to take his word and kept fighting for his dear life. Getting him on treatment and loving him as much as we could. A week after, baby Brian was gaining weight and looking so much better than before. The thrush was ALMOST gone! We were proud.

During his second week of his stay with us, baby Brian still seemed ok .It was not until Friday night when he started getting fevers which we controlled with paracetamol. First thing the next morning, baby Brian was rushed to the hospital. While in the hospital queue, he was noticeably changing every 30 minutes!

We finally made it to the doctor who examined him and suggested some drugs for him through an iv. Poor little one, his veins couldn’t not be found, he got pricked so many times! It was so sad watching him in pain. Struggling so hard to breath. 5 minutes after the injection, baby Brian passed. He passed away on the 9^th of July 2011.

The doctor then told me he died from severe pneumonia. It was so hard to take! Having so many thoughts like, if only I knew he had pneumonia a week ago, if only he was put on oxygen on time.

Too many thoughts were going through my mind. But then at the same time, I got the understanding that we had actually tried all we could and it was just time for him to go. He was in so much pain and now I believe he is in the safest place. With no more pain, he is our little angel. And he will always be a part of us. We miss him but he is in the loving arms of His Father
.



Looking on the brighter side, at AASU we received 8 new volunteers who are working with us for a time ranging from 6 to 8 weeks. They are working at the baby’s home and the village projects as well for the rest of their stay . They will be working in the community education, supporting and facilitating livelihoods, helping community members set up back yard gardens of fruits and vegetables as a follow-up of the nutrition session that our last volunteers delivered in kibuye village.

Other volunteers will be continuing with the literacy project teaching community members how to read and write. They will be working with community members who have never had a chance to go to school.

Other ongoing projects include   candle making, beads rolling and the livelihood project. All these projects are under community outreach, with the aim of helping people in Kibuye village make an income for sustainable living.

Community members in kibuye village also attend literacy sessions which   give older people a chance to learn how to read and write.

These projects are lead by our volunteers who have devoted five days every week to stay in the village and help make a difference in kibuye and the surrounding communities. Members of Arise and Shine Uganda are so proud of the Volunteers as they all just seem to be a natural in Uganda!

Coming up next week: volunteer experiences and their ongoing projects!

Community Sensitization in Kibuye Village Kamuli District Vision and mission

On 2nd/ July/2011,  BAFNET left Kampala at around 9am in the morning and traveled to Kamuli district  in partnership with Arise and Shine Uganda (AASU) to carry out community outreach, Empowering community members in Kamuli District how to avoid lightening and the the first aid given to the Person hit by lightening and Community sensitization in a theme“Strengthening our partnership through community out reach”. This was a one day event and all members participated fully where over 50 community members turned up for the activities.

below the team departs to Kamuli by public means

Bafnet  members had a five hour drive to Kamuli by a Matatu/Taxi and later from the taxi park we took a special hire to Kibuye Village.

Members of the community gave us a warm welcome

The team started off by giving a brief introduction and later we embarked on the sensitization of the community members about Lightening the major activity of the day. Lightening has led to death to over 40 people, injured over 200 in different parts of the country in the last 15 days where the most affected are the children below the age of 15 years. (Our target was the whole community in Kibuye Village in Kamuli District in the eastern part of Uganda.)

The session ended at 3 pm and later we proceeded to Jinja at arise and shine home

At a round 6 pm we reached  arise and shine home in Jinja, we found when the babies are having supper/Dinner so  we spent 1 hour sharing fun with the kids, asking some questions the care takers

At a round 7 pm, Bafnet team left for Kampala after along day full of different activities.

for more pictures please click on

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1763296097069.76736.1679125380

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“At Bafnet, humanity is our faith”

One Response to “Community Sensitization in Kibuye Village Kamuli District”

1.    

BAFNET

Tim's volunteer blog

Greetings from Indonesia!

I’ve been in Uganda for roughly about two and half weeks and I have to admit that I have been charmed thoroughly.  She is a beautiful country bursting with African energy and this is captured perfectly by fun-loving friendly locals.

I spent my first few days acclimatizing with local habits and cultures, but did not encounter the culture shock that I had been expecting. Local staple foods are not much different than in my home country, probably due to similarity in climate. Almost everyone in the cities and towns are able to converse in English, hence eliminating the problem of language barrier. In fact, my colleagues and I learned a few tricks or two in haggling with the locals! What really struck me in awe though, is the degree of friendliness displayed by many locals—adults and children alike—to “mzungus” (foreigners). You get the real sense of being welcomed and embraced in Uganda, and this totally makes a lot of difference.

My first working week was used up almost entirely in Arise & Shine Care Home in Jinja. I have to say that I have always been terrible in dealing with babies and pre-nursery kids. I presume it has something to do with me being the youngest in the family. Admittedly, the night before I was horrified with the idea of dealing with tens of babies and kids crying and kicking and swarming and climbing all over me. However, within a few minutes at the home compound, I realized it was not all that bad. The babies were all lovely! I had initial difficulties in recognizing each one as they all looked the same to me.  Did I mention twins and triplets? Luckily enough, after spending a few days getting to know their different personalities the task became so much easier. This first week has been a great learning curve, and yet it has been a lot of fun as well.

My colleagues and I went to Kibuye village the following week for the much anticipated community education projects. Some of us were assigned to meet-and-greet sessions with the villagers while others were appointed to help teachers of AASU primary school in classes. The meet-and-greet sessions which also served as Q & A sessions were particularly interesting and enlightening, as we have had the opportunity to learn more about the general situation of the village directly from the locals. Many of the villagers readily voiced out their aspirations as well as conveying the difficulties they faced in daily lives. These meet-and-greet sessions will hopefully provide for the current and future volunteers’ teams sufficient data to carry out the various relevant community education projects.

Overall, in my opinion these last two weeks have been very productive yet challenging. Going overseas with totally foreign culture and background was by no means a new experience, and I felt excited as well as empowered to make a difference for the local community. I hope that I won’t disappoint.

Stay tuned with the AASU blog for further insight into the exciting lives of international volunteers in Uganda!

                

Ali’s Blog: Uncle Ali

[An intro line about me being a volunteer here].

My first full week in Uganda was spent in the AASU babies home in Jinja, during which time I’ve had a lot of fun getting to know and playing with the kids staying there.

I haven’t worked with kids much previously, so I wasn’t sure how easy I would find working in the babies home. The kids soon decided for me. On my first visit, after the initial shyness had worn off, within a few minutes I had a number of them climbing all over me! From then on I knew there wouldn’t be any problem playing with the kids. The thing I thought would be most difficult would be learning all their names, especially as there are 3 sets of twins. However by Wednesday I felt I pretty much had them all learnt, spending time with them all and getting to know their different personalities made this much easier than expected. A slight spanner was thrown in the works on Thursday when a set of identical triplets joined the home, all with names beginning with the letter L! I haven’t even tried to learn who’s who out of these new arrivals!

Each morning when I arrived, I would usually be greeted by one or two of the kids running and grabbing my legs. Who these were varied day to day, but the usual suspects were Fiona and Venekent who have been my limpets for the week, one of them was usually hanging on to me somehow during the day, if not both.

                                       (Photo: The usual suspects – Venekent and Fiona)

                                        In the morning after breakfast the kids have preschool. This is a mixture of both sitting down with the teacher inside, learning basic English, and going outside and playing games or singing songs in either English or Luganda. My role in the preschool sessions would vary – sometimes it was best for me to hang back while they were focused on the teacher, other times when some of their attention had already been lost I’d try to help by either stopping them from disturbing the others or trying to go through the lesson with the breakaway group. At times the preschool sessions have been pretty chaotic, it’s not surprising when there are 16 toddlers in a room, getting them to sit down and pay attention is always going to be a challenge. I can’t remember what preschool was like back home but it’s probably the same. What was impressive though is that when the teacher would ask the kids about what they’ve learnt they’d remember a really good amount and sometimes you’d hear them saying things from class during the day.

On Friday during preschool I did some one-on-one teaching with Federes , which I’d been thinking of doing for a couple of days as she’s a bit older than the others and was clearly finding the classes too easy. I knew she could just about count to 20, so I thought we’d just go over that and a bit more. I was really impressed though when we kept going all the way to 100 and even started to learn some spelling of some of the words she already knew how to say. The little I did with her that morning was really rewarding as she was very keen to learn and as soon as she’s able to I’m sure she’ll do really well in school.

Overall, it’s been a really good week in the babies home working/playing with the kids and getting to know them. It’ll be sad not to see them every day but I’m also looking forward to the new challenges and experiences in the village – first helping in the school and then working on the community education projects.

  

Some of our products

 The majority of Arise and Shine Uganda’s project funds come from people buying and selling our beautiful handmade products. All of our products are made by ladies that previously had little or no income, as a way of earning money to support their families. As our paper bead necklaces and jewellery have proved to be popular, we have decided to diversify our range and are in the process of making fabric beaded jewellery as well. This new range means that we are able to employ and train more women. At the moment we are trialling the jewellery being made by women in town, but with the imminent arrival of our international volunteers, we also hope to be able to set up a fabric bead making group in the village as part of our community outreach work there.

We are looking forward to being able to post pictures of our new products soon!

Results time at AASU Nursery & Primary School

As we mentioned previously, the 18th of April marked the end of our first term at Arise and Shine Nursery & Primary School. Before term finished, our pupils took their end of term exams.  We decided to set the bar high from the outset, with our students taking the ‘National Standard Exam’ which dictates the country wide standard for students studying in town schools across Uganda. It is not unusual for students studying in villages to receive an easier version of this exam, however, at Arise and Shine Uganda, we want our students to be given the best possible chances in life and able to compete with the rest of the country, not just with ‘village people’. Therefore, we have chosen to educate them to a national level, which may appear difficult to begin with but which will stand our students in good stead in the long run.

As our students have never been examined before, and given the high quality of examination given to them, we were unsure as to how well they would do, or how their parents would react (if students performed badly, it’s possible parents may not take into consideration the difficulty of the exam and would instead blame the school for not teaching their children properly). However, students surpassed our expectations and parents were thrilled to see the high standard we were setting for their children!

The examinations were completed by 50 students, spread between Nursery and Primary 3 level. All students took 7 exams in the following subjects: Literacy 1 (Science), Literacy 2 (Social Studies), Mathematics, English Language, Luganda Language, Writing and Reading.

The students’ performances in all these subjects were beyond our anything we could have hoped for and overall all we met national average level, much to the delight of Arise and Shine Uganda and the children’s parents!

Some of the parents even asked for extra examination papers and news reached us that they were showing it and bragging, about the high standard of the examinations and excellent performances of their children, to other parents in and around the Kibuye trading centre.

Arise and Shine Nursery & Primary School staff, teachers and parents are so proud of our students and believe we will do even better next term.

AASU would like to say a big congratulations to all at Arise and Shine Nursery & Primary School (staff, students and parents), we’re very proud of you!