Hello everyone!

Greetings to all. The children are all in good health and we are glad to inform you that they all send you regards. Miryante has served children since 2009 and HIV/AIDs is still the leading cause of the great number of children that we receive after the loss of their parents. January has been a wonderful month.  Children who are in the 7^th grade (P7) and seniors in high school (S4) started school on the 18^th   of January while other children  continued with home schooling. With the help of our nursery teacher, our kids do tests at the end of every week.  Other holiday programs are carried out as usual such as digging in the garden, slashing the compound, playing sport and games, watching programs, grazing cows and goats etc. Below are the photos:

We started the New Year out with a big meal to celebrate. A special thank you to Jon & Kelly Sill, Todd & Coleen Sill, and Gary & Sue Bechtold for donating this special meal!

Healthy:

 We are glad to say that most of our children are in a good health condition and the nurse takes good care of the children that require treatment. We have not yet registered any case of a child in an alarming health status this month. Thanks to all our dear sponsors that donate to us, the medicine is always there in the sickbay for any emergency cases. We are overwhelmed with the love and care you exhibit towards us.

GUARDIANSHIP PROGAMME

Through a basic survey made by our social workers in villages we got to know that the pandemic has put many families under unimaginable strain. The threat of continued hunger is more worrying than COVID-19, so we decided to provide additional support to families in the community under the guardianship programme. Continuous support has been rendered to these households and so far there is  a promising progress.

Our social workers have continued making regular visits to follow up the progress of the new families  and  monthly distribution of  flour, hygiene products, mattresses, bed sheets, blankets, suitcases, soap, shoes, clothes etc. We owe every child we encounter an opportunity to belong to a stable and loving group of people that can take care of them, that’s why we are passionately committed to giving whatever a child needs. Our social workers have also trained more guardians on how to run different animal husbandry and agriculture projects in their homes. We were able to resettle the another group of children back to their homes after making sure that they are in favorable environment and have good guardians responsible for their upbringing. Below are the photos of some of the children:

Photos of the last group being resettled

Photos of Judith Kobusingye under household number 30 in Inkawa Buzoba village. She has a garden of pineapples, cassava and yams.

Photos of Veronica under household 33 in Kibira village. Veronica has banana plantation as her project, and we found her mulching her garden.

Donations

Thanks  to Patel Family  which surprised our childern  with  buscuits.  The childern had their breakfast with biscuits for two days. Thank you for the great  contribution. May bless  God!

 Below are the photos :

 Farm and Gardens

We are preparing our garden to plant vegetables and maize, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes etc. for the next season.   Under the farm, our cattle, rabbits, and goats are doing fine.

Finalists.

Under employment in Kyegegwa District remains a problem, particularly in rural settings,  but as Miryante has a vocational school that  offers  business and entrepreneurial skills, we are giving our kids a chance to earn an income. When they graduate they are given startup tools  and we help them with job placement. Young  people are empowered and educated to make smart decisions regarding  their future . Due to the skills they acquire, it’s also a reward to us. Below are photos of finalists receiving their startup tools with a happy smile:

We sincerely thank our donors for your financial support, prayers, and commitment towards   Miryante. With your great contributions, many children and families have managed to survive and have had a bright future ahead of them.

 MAY GOD BLESS YOU ALL.

Hello everyone!

Greetings from Miryante Children’s Home. We really love you all and we do appreciate all the love and support in such difficult times of COVID-19. All our children are healthy and happy. Our candidates broke off for their school break on 17^th December 2020. We had such a wonderful festival season with a lot of donations from our sponsors during this Christmas season. It started with Christmas Eve when every child got to make a selection of clothes for Christmas day. This donation was made possible by Jon & Kelly Sill, Todd & Coleen Sill, and Gary and Sue Bechtold. Thank you so much for your generosity! Thank you so much to all the individual donors who made special donations for their kids to do extra shopping. This was such a treat for the kids! Please see the photos below:

The children had so much excitement for this special day, the children took photos in their new clothes before they went to church below are the photos:

Photos of children attending service in church on Christmas day:

We had a variety of food for the Christmas meal which was sponsored by the Baker Family- thank you so much! The Christmas meal gave the children a chance to choose what they want. We had rice, plantains, cassava, potatoes, groundnuts sauce, fish, beef, pork, spaghetti and sodas. We were also able to hire a DJ to come for a dance. This was sponsored by the Jenny French Family. Thank you so much! Photos are shown below  :

On the 15^th of December 2020, one good Samaritan from the community donated on truck of firewood for Christmas day. Below is the photo:

Guardianship program;

In the year 2018-2019, the guardianship/foster program started off with twenty five households which are really doing well up to date in their communities. This has enabled the program to operate smoothly. As government is has now instituted policies to try to deinstitutionalize the care of orphans and vulnerable children, our social workers visited a number of families that we later added on the program. We have now expanded the program to more than 50 children. We have worked to place them in homes  where the conditions are favorable.  Our Board of Directors held a meeting where they called all relatives of children that are staying at the home to see if there was any way we can place them in homes.

Every child that has been placed in a foster home has been given a mattress, bedding, sanitary napkins, soap, clothes, toothpaste, shoes, sandals, towels, and suitcases. Miryante is also paying for school fees, scholastic materials, school uniforms, and providing the foster family with beans, rice, and maize meal. These things are given out by our social workers who will be going to carry out regular visits to different households to check on their hygiene, and the children’s progress in the home and school. Below are the photos:

Thanks very much to everyone that has contributed towards this initiative, you have made us shine!

Hello everyone!

Greetings from all the children here at the home. All our children are in good health.

On 24^th & 25^th of November our Miryante team conducted trainings in various schools. These trainings were about preventing COVID-19 in schools, especially the primary schools that our children attend. It was mainly teaching the children skills such as makin homemade masks, liquid soap and tippy-taps for hand washing. 

Our counselors also had counseling sessions conducted at schools where our children attend. These counseling sessions focused on psycho-social support and the prevention of child-marriage and child labor.  

The week started well. We had four days of training in four schools. Each day we trained one school. At each school we had a meeting and provided positive feedback for the foster families we support. As their children are now returning to school, we wanted to recognize these families for all that they have done to continue supporting their foster child’s learning and to give them confidence to stay engaged in school.

During the training, we found out that all the pupils in the four schools where our children attend (Humura Primary School, Kako Primary, Kabweza Primary, and Wekomire Primary) had some knowledge about COVID-19. All knew the preventative measures and the risky places in their schools. In all of the schools, the pupils and their teachers were really interested in learning life skills.

Kaka Primary School for day one

Day one went well. Even though the rain interfered with our program, we were still able to finish all the sessions! All the pupils were well information about COVID-19. The head teacher was also very interested in learning life skills as well as the other teachers. The head teacher kept moving around to check on his pupils’ progress with life skills, especially masks making. Of all the three skills we taught them, the pupils’ biggest worry was where to get the 100% cotton material to make masks.

Below is Humura Primary school for day two

The pupils turned up early and their main interest was learning life skills. Each of them was in a position to make one mask, including their teachers. Each of them went home that day wearing a mask that they made by themselves. All participated in making the liquid soap and the tippy-taps for hand washing. They all promised to construct tippy-taps in their homes and also to teach others in their community. Their biggest challenge for them was where to buy the chemicals needed to make soap. Below are pics for all the sessions:

Kabweza Primary School for day three

It rained almost the whole day, but this didn’t stop the pupils from coming to school. Most of them moved in the rain and they were able to make it to the school. All the children knew how to wear masks, even though only 5 out of the 10 kids had masks. The children also knew the effects of COVID19, risky places in school environment and how to prevent COVID-19. They were all interested in making masks, liquid soap and tippy-taps.

Wekomire Primary for day Four

Day four! The training started late due to the rain but later the pupils turned up and were able to have a successful training. This was so interesting because almost all the teachers turned up for life skills training. Below are the pictures of all the sessions.

During this holiday, our children have been involved in a number of activities such as planting greens/vegetates, maize, Irish potatoes, matooke, pumpkins, fruits etc.

We visited the families under our foster/guardianship program. We gave them a number of things such as scholastic materials and basic needs like soap, toothpaste, sanitary towels, clothes, and food.

Some of our children are already running projects like rabbit raising and maize, watermelons and beans growing. It was really awesome during our visit seeing everything our children are doing. We are glad to inform you that the children and their guardians are seriously picking up on the farming skills.

Below are the pictures showing children and their guardians with their projects.  

We appreciate you all for the support, thanks for making a difference!

Hello Everyone!

Greetings from all the children here at the home. We are all grateful for all your support and the most important report is that all the children are in good health. Our children are really happy and healthy. This month we had a lot of activities that took place at the home and the most important news is that our government is opening up places of worship and also candidate classes.

On 15^th October 2020, Schools re-opened and all our children who are candidates for exams this year went back to school. The schools include King Solomon Secondary School, St. Thomas Primary School, Miryante Vocational School, Butiiti teachers college, St. Michael Secondary school, St. Peter’s technical institute and Migongwe Primary School as shown below: 

Guardianship Program:

All the households are doing well and we are now working to transition more children into this program as recommended by the government. Our social workers are very busy visiting homes where our children will be placed by the end of this year.

We are also planning a meeting with all the guardians to assure them of the support that they will be receiving monthly just like the ones on the program are receiving. For some guardians they are very concerned about paying school fees, and buying food, soap, bedding, clothes and scholastic materials. Miryante is providing all of this to children under the guardianship program.

According to our observations, there are already great improvements for 25 children under the guardianship program in the different households. This hasn’t been an easy journey to educate the guardians on providing improved care for the orphans who are living with them.  

During visits, we teach and engage our children in farming and perma gardening. The good news is that most of the farming techniques have been adopted in each home, and they each have a small garden they are running as a family. Mucunguzi Peter has a rabbit project and we are now looking at his family has a model home. He built a semi-permanent structure for his rabbits. Peter started with two rabbits and now has 10 rabbits. We are also encouraging other homes to start projects like this.

Below are photos of Doreen Komwaka showing us her maize garden as her project.  

We are happy to inform you of a new motorcycle that Miryante has received from the Uganda Women’s Network. This is to help us as we move in the field in a program for empowerment of women/mothers. This program is funded by Uganda Women’s Network, and has the purpose of working to help vulnerable women and their children.  For this project we have a social worker who is working with 85 households in the surrounding districts.

Agriculture Programs:

 We are still planting more vegetables this season and our children are having plenty of vegetable, which is nutritious for their bodies. We have planted maize, beans, cassava, sweet potatoes and also expanded on the banana plantation.   

Under the farm our animals are okay and healthy. We manage to get 15 liters of milk per day to mix in the children’s porridge. Our rabbits gave birth to more young ones everyone month and they are increasing in number and are now 40 rabbits. We are looking at doing this as a project to every guardianship house hold by next year and the vegetable project just as our sister project St. Gyavira Buyende Home is doing.

We can never stop saying thank you to you all for the wonderful support!

Hello everyone!

Greetings from Miryante Children’s Home. The children are all in good health. We are glad to inform you that the children are helping us around the campus with garden work. Since education institutions will be reopened and classes will resume on 15^th October 2020, we bought all requirements that were requested by our children who are in candidate classes so that they all get prepared early to start school very soon. Candidates are children who are in primary level 7 and secondary level 4 who are sitting for their entry level exams. The other children in other grades are continuing with the home-schooling lessons until the government informs us of the second phase of the re-opening for educational institutions.

We are also preparing more children and their families to transition to the guardianship program since the government of Uganda is now requesting us to help most of our children find homes with their relatives instead of institutionalizing them. With time, we hope to have fewer children living on site at Miryante Children’s Home and more children to be resettled in their homes. We will be providing support for these children in their homes with Scholastic materials, paying fees at the schools where they attend, paying for all medical care that the nearby clinics or health centers, providing bedding, clothing, and food. 

Below are photos showing children doing their different activities:

Following the government standard operating procedures, we were able to sew 2 reusable masks for each child to use at church and also at school. These masks are for the candidates who are returning to school, those children who have to go to the hospital, and to those children going to public places for shopping. More masks are being sewed by our children who study at Miryante Vocational school.  We also managed to buy two temperature guns for the vocational school since it was one of the requirements for the institute to reopen. We need to check temperatures in order for the vocational school to open. Please see pictures of the masks as shown below:

On the 26^th September 2020, we received visitors from Mubende Rotary Club who were here to celebrate the birthdays for all children born in September. Below are photos of some members sharing a cake with our children!

The guardianship program is going on well as shown below with big smiles from children and their relatives while receiving food, soap, gel, and other basic supplies. So far we have 30 children that we are helping under the guardianship program and they are all progressing very well. The families are also doing well with their agriculture projects (children and their guardians have planted different types of crops which is an achievement and they are all healthy).

Akandiinda Isaac’s successful story.

We are all every excited for Isaac’s successful journey, he can now walk by himself, feed himself, and also help the family members do some domestic work. You can tell by his smile and pose that Isaac is now a happy man and ready to go to school.  We at Miryante are excited and can’t wait to see Isaac start school.

Thank you so much for all your help. You are always willing to be there for us whenever we need you.

Hello everyone!

Greetings to all. The children are all in good health and we are glad to inform you that they all send you greetings. We really appreciate all the support for the children, especially during the lockdown period. We made wardrobes for each dormitory for the children to put their clothes and new beds with hooks to help make it easy to spread their mosquito nets.

Our children are also following a programmed time table which runs for a full month and includes activities like digging, games, debate, home schooling, rearing animals and so many others. This is all done to helps us manage our children. Below are the photos: 

On behalf of Miryante Children’s home we would like to thanks Crutches for Africa for donating a number of devices to people with disabilities. All these devices were distributed to people by Rotary Club of Mubende. Thanks to Rotary Club of Mubende for its service!

Miryante Market: During this month, we managed to open up a market to enable us purposely sell our excess vegetables. This semi-permanent market is built along the road to help us also market our technical school sell hand crafts made by students at the school.

We are grateful and very happy to inform you that we have never run short of the vegetables. Our season runs throughout the year and the children are eating vegetables at every meal.

This season, we have planted a number of vegetables and fruits. These include: kale, simsim, green peppers, eggplants, nakatti, papaya, pineapples and pumpkins. Most of these vegetables are being harvested and some are still being grown in the nursery beds. Also, a number of foods have been planted and these include the expansion of the banana plantation, yams, cassava, maize and beans as shown below:

All our animals are very okay and also increasing in number. This month we managed to deworm all of them.

Thanks to all our donors that have helped us push this far. We are all humbled for you being part of us.

Hello Everyone!

Greetings from Miryante Children’s Home! The children are all in good health. We are glad to inform you that the kids are all very happy due to different programs that we have setup this month that have enabled us to manage our children during this long holiday. Programs we are doing include sport and games, digging, grazing cattle and goats, debating, and also home schooling since there are some teachers on site . Below are photos showing children doing their different activities.

We have had a great harvest of different foods which has enabled us to balance the diet of our children.  

Under the farm, our cattle, rabbits, and goats are doing fine. The rabbits project is really doing very well as you can see from the picture below. We now have 20 rabbits!

We have also working hand in hand with the councilors in our area to see that people with disabilities also live a happy life. Thanks to Crutches for Africa for the support, as we have been able to distribute assistive devices to people in need within the community.

The guardianship program seems to be giving good results as the kids look happy staying at a home as long as they receive support. We are also identifying more kids in the orphanage to join the guardianship program by October of this year. Through the guardianship program they will be receiving support like: scholastic materials, clothing, bedding, medical care, and food. We believe these are the key things that make every child happy and this what the Ministry is recommending for now.  Below are pictures of our social workers while on a visit in one of the homes where we have a child staying with a grandmother.

We are grateful as Miryante Management to our donors that do support us even during this lockdown.

Hello Everyone!

Greetings from Miryante Home. We send you all warm regards from Uganda. Despite COVID-19, we still thank God for the gift of life that He has given to us all. We also feel so grateful for your monthly support towards Miryante Children’s home, especially amidst this entire crisis.

Education:

The children are doing very well and their health is good. They are trying to study remotely via Uganda’s national teaching program on the television. It’s still is not the best because they cannot ask the teacher when they haven’t understood something, but it’s better than nothing. The other holiday programs are still carried on as usual i.e. daily slashing the compound, playing games, and digging in the garden as shown below:

Thanks to our former Volunteer Olly who surprised our kids with 15 cartons of soda, a goat, and 25 kgs of rice. Thanks for being part of us. The children were happy and felt loved especially during such a season in a lockdown.

Every Friday our social workers and caretakers meet with the children for group counseling and listen to the children’s concerns. They teach them about sanitation and body hygiene and general cleanliness and its importance. We always award marks to different dormitories according to their performance.

Agriculture:

 Despite of the drought during this season, the children are of great help in watering and mulching the vegetables. As management we are happy to inform you all that despite the drought, we have enough vegetables for the children. We even have a surplus that we are donating to the community to share with families that are in need during this time.  Below are some pictures of our gardens and cultivating the vegetable garden

Thanks to everyone, that is giving a hand towards this great work. We feel blessed at Miryante Home.

Hello Everyone!

Greetings from Miryante Community and Home. We are here to thank you for your generosity. Despite the lockdown, we are able to study and have three meals a day. It is because of your support that we are able to have all this. We are not happy with the situation everywhere from what we have read in the news, but we are in this together and we do pray for the whole world everyday to stabilize so that we can go back to school, go to church, and get to see our friends back in school.

All the children are safe, healthy, and they are praying for everyone.  Due to the long holiday, our children are following a holiday program to keep them busy around the home. These programs run from Monday up to Sunday and these activities include prayers in isolation, exams & revisions from lessons, cow grazing, rabbit and goat rearing, planting crops, slashing the compound, digging, Bible study every Thursday and football every evening. This has helped our children learn more skills and has helped us as management and caregivers to handle them since the holiday is still going on.

Below are photos of the children practicing exams with social distancing.

Donations!

 We are very happy to update you on a number of donations that we received this month from two companies. We received over 30 boxes of sanitary pads for the girls and 8 boxes of toothpaste for all the children to use. We are sure this will take us through the year. We received this donation from Vision Impex.

We also received over 72 dozen books of 96pages, 44 dozen books of 48 pages, 5 boxes of beans and 11 reams of paper for the office use, all this was from Prime Impex Limited in Kampala, Uganda. We surely feel blessed as management and the children feel loved.

Another donation of $650 to cater for food came in from David Talbot the president of Crutches for Africa who donated over 780 kgs of posho and 200 kgs of beans. We really feel so blessed to have people think about us especially in a season where people are meant to think about themselves.

Another big surprise came from Stanbic Bank that donated a number of items to us and thanked us for banking with them. The items included sugar, rice, and cooking oil, pads, soap, beans, posho and toothpaste. The Stanbic Team spared time to visit our project and played with the children and shared smiles. We really thank you our sponsors for allowing us bank with Stanbic Bank group.

During this lockdown, we have also received a lot of new cases from the community and all these cases were a result of poverty and family breakdown due to this pandemic. These children were found living without parents or guardians in child-headed house-holds and they have been moved to Miryante to receive services. The children include Sirivano aged 14 who has been grazing people’s cattle to get food for the siblings, Lillian aged 13 who was working as a maid in the neighborhood,  Aloyozous aged 9, and Gerald aged 6.

The four children lived in an old muddy structured house and shared beddings. These children were also malnourished and infected with jiggers because of being neglected.  We managed to rescue them; they are very happy here and their health has improved in one month.  The first pictures below show their condition when found by children services, and the last photos below were taken a week later at Miryante when police visited to check on their condition.  

Our latest arrival is a seven-year old boy called Sirivano, who was found living without a responsible parent or guardian. The Community members became concerned and reported the case to Miryante. We are trying to locate the parents and reunite these children with their family. We are working with a government team from the office of child welfare services. Sirivano is now with us till the situation normalizes.  Below are pictures of Sirivano with a big smile on his face after joining us at Miryante.

Under agriculture department!

We are grateful for the wonderful works done by the children during this break. The drought has been very long here and the children have helped a lot with watering the vegetable gardens and weeding the bananas and sweet potatoes. This hasn’t stopped at that, they are also mulching in the vegetable gardens where we are growing green peppers, egg plants, kale and the banana plantation as shown below: 

Below is a photo of the land we cultivated to plant more vegetables and greens. It’s about 1 acre of land.

Under the farm project, 3 of our sows gave birth to 8 healthy piglets and our two female rabbits gave birth to 14 young ones. The little children have shown much love to for rabbits and they find it very interesting. We have also given them a chance to manage the rabbit project but under serious supervision by the agriculture officer.

Thanks very much to everyone that is contributing to support this project and also thanks for loving us.

                                         APRIL NEWSLETTER 2020

Hello Everyone!

Greetings from Miryante Orphanage. We really love you all and we appreciate all the support that you are rendering to us despite COVID-19. All the children are safe, healthy, and they are praying for everyone all over the world. On the 12^th of April 2020, we celebrated Easter day which was really fun, although we weren’t able to celebrate mass as usual. The Easter celebrations came along with a lot of food such as plantains, rice, meat, pork, fish, peanut sauce and soda. After lunch the children watched movies such as The Passion of the Christ.

During this long break from school, Uditah Komuhangi, one of the students that graduated from Miryante Vocational School, used this time to teach the other children how to make African baskets and also how to make different designs of girls’ dresses. Below are the photos:

The gardens are doing very well this season. The temperatures are a bit high, but with the help of our children, we are able to mulch all the vegetable gardens and use the drip irrigation system. Our harvests are very good. We are also looking at extending our vegetable gardens to five acers since they are nutritious and provide great food for the kids. Below are some pictures of our gardens and the harvests.

We have also managed to donate vegetables weekly to families who are in need of food due to the COVID-19 lockdown in the community.

The tailoring class with the help of their instructors are making face masks for all the children to use before school opens.

On the farm, our cows are doing well. We have routine medical checkups for all of the animals which is done every two weeks, and the animals are sprayed for flies and ticks every Saturday:

Thanks very much to everyone who is endeavoring to help us to meet our basic needs. We would be completely nothing and nowhere without you, especially during COVID-19 season. May God Bless All.