Stitching hope through education
In my first few months as CEO, I feel very lucky to be witnessing the beginning of an incredible new project that we believe will have a huge impact on the lives of the children we work with.
In March, we launched our Tailoring Training programme, designed to give children who have been on the streets practical skills to gain employment.
Kindly funded by a UK charity called Help Change Lives, we are now able to offer tailoring training at our residential site for both young people who are staying with us, as well as some in the local area who have already been resettled home. The training will give these young people the valuable skills they need to gain employment and therefore the chance of a brighter future.
When I was in Uganda, I also had the opportunity to get my hands dirty (literally!) as I learnt more about our ‘Growing for the Future’ Permaculture programme. This is our initiative to provide permaculture training for young people who have previously lived on the streets and are undergoing rehabilitation at our Halfway Homes and Drug Rehabilitation Centre.
Our training provides them with vital skills that will benefit them for life, supports their recovery from drug addiction and helps to re-build their self-confidence. It also gives our social workers the opportunity to build relationships with them in a less formal setting and helps prepare them to return to education. Once they are resettled, we provide them with seed packages so that they can share their new skills with their family and community members.
I am really excited to help these initiatives grow as we continue to make a lasting, sustainable impact on the lives of street connected children and their families. Thank you to everyone who has helped make these programmes possible.
Growing dreams
We currently have over 120 children in our Education programme offering a mix of vocational and academic learning. These are children who have been on the streets and are now safely resettled home but their families can’t afford to send them to school.
We work with these families to help them become self-sufficient through our Family Business Empowerment programme so that one day, they can be in a position to take over paying for their child’s education fully so that S.A.L.V.E. can then support another child in need.
However, this is a process that takes time. Until then, we need people to support our Education programme either by donating to our Education Fund or becoming a Child Sponsor. We currently have 38 children in our programme who are waiting to be supported, as well as a long list of children who we simply can’t afford to fund right now.
Can you help? You can sponsor as an individual, a group or a workplace and sponsorship starts from as little as £20 per month. We believe that education is the key to giving young people a brighter future and breaking the cycle of poverty, but we can’t do it without your help.
If you want to know more about helping a child fulfil their dreams through education, we would love to hear from you.
Latest S.A.L.V.E. news
💃 We held a ceili in Manchester in April which raised over £900! Huge thanks to everyone who came along and danced the night away.
🔊 You can now listen to our latest podcast episode, all about empowering families of children we have resettled home from the streets with businesses so that they can have the chance of a better, self-sufficient future.
👀 Our Impact stats have been updated and we are delighted to share what we have achieved, together with your support. Please check them out here.
🎉 In April, we celebrated the International Day for Street Children. The theme for this year was “belonging” and we were part of an event in Jinja which saw a large procession through the streets. We also created a newspaper from poems, pictures, photos and articles written by street connected children. Read a copy in English or Luganda here.
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