AUGUST NEWSLETTER 2018

August has been a blessed month to us at Miryante Village. We received more visitors, some were Laura’s’ sisters, cousins and friends from the United States, India, Japan and Australia.  We are really grateful as a community for the wonderful love that people do share with us.

We received so many gifts from the donors last month for the children and these included shoes, clothes, art supplies, balls and sandals.

On 17^th /08/2018 our children broke off for holidays. At least most of them got good grades and were promising as they study hard to sit for final exams to be promoted to another level.

Our holiday program is going on well. The children have managed to form different clubs like a debating club which is working out well, games and sports, compound clearing, grazing, digging and Bible study class. This is all done according to the time table. Below are some of the pictures for our children while breaking off from school:

Below are pictures of our children at the orphanage and some under the guardianship playing and sharing love with sponsors.

We are also grateful for the wonderful donationof biscuts, juice and clothes from Mr. Patel’s family.

We cannot stop to say thank you to father David from the United States who visited our orphanage last year and donated a bio-gas plant to the orphanage. The project is doing very well. The system can handle boiling porridge, boiling beans and also boiling water for maize meal but we mingle from the stone. This has helped us a lot. We no longer send our children to go look for fire wood especially during a rainy season like this one.

Our gardens have expanded. During the first term holiday, our children planted sweet potatoes by the help of the our agriculture asistant, social workers and the caregivers. This was to help us improve their diet. Its during this holiday that we started harvesting as shown below.

Last term was very tight with so many activities and these included inter house compititions and the winning house was given a goat. The school later closed on 17^th /08/2018

The management team remained behind after the students had left and the other teaching staff to plan for the coming term that also has so many activites  like sitting exams such as for DIT and UBTEB for the first time here at the technical school. Below is the technical school management being helped by Fr. George William to plan for the coming term and they later posed the picture with Mr. Graham Townsend who had visited Miryante Village from New Zealand.

We are forever grateful to everyone who is supporting us in any way. We are praying for you- thank you so much for all the help and love you have given us!

JULY NEWSLETTER 2018

Hello everyone!

We would like to extend our greetings to everyone out there and also to say thank you for the great support towards our projects.

The children are doing well in their studies in all the different categories that we support and these include: primary under the orphanage, technical, secondary, guardianship and child-headed families.

On 1^st of July 2018 we visited our 22 students who study from King Solomon Secondary school. They were all very happy to see us. We also carried them a number of things for all of them and this excited them the more as you see the pictures attached below.

Technical school! The school has a total of 91 students of which 23 are from the orphanage and the 68 are from the community. Below are some of the pictures taken from the Building class, Carpentry, Tailoring class and hair dressing class.

Child-headed family program under Kyakak II refugee camp is doing well at with 30 children receiving services under this program. These children receive three meals a day. It’s not only food that we provide. We do also give them scholastic material to help them keep in school. As you see them below, they all look happy.

Through Miryante Orphanage we were able to help distribute mobility devices for people with disabilities in Kyegegwa District through donations from Crutches For Africa.

We couldn’t wait to update you about our Bio-gas project. This was a donation from Fr. David who visited last year from USA and other missioners that saw this need at the orphanage. We are so grateful for this project because finding firewood has been a big problem. We are now sure of the kids are not going to be missing meals.

We are so grateful for the borehole repairs done by Inno-Pak Company. Our borehole has been giving us giving us water with a lot of sediment until we got this donation to work on it. We are happy to inform you that the water we are getting now is very clean due to the repairs.

We would also like to expend our sincere thanks to St. Peter’s Catholic Church Ohio for the great donations they have made towards Miryante church and in this includes: 50 Benches, and 15 frames with pictures showing the stations of the cross.  Our children now no longer have to carry desks from the classroom and the dining hall to the church to use since there is a distance to the church and the kids were also accidently breaking some of the desks when they were carrying them.

The Mission group for this year has done a great job by fixing our goats house which has been in a serious need of repair and also our cattle corral. These renovations were done with the help of our children from the carpentry class and the building class. As this was taking place the ladies were having games with the little kids as shown below:

The month of July ended in a style here at Miryante. On Sunday the day started with a heavy breakfast. The children made for themselves chapatis and porridge with Milk. We had mass then led by Father Amooti  from Kakabara parish and the Director with the help of a Deacon Reed from Ohio.  We later had heavy lunch which included: Matooke, Milet bread, Soda, Fish and G.nuts, Beef (we slaughtered one of the bulls), Rice, Irish potatoes and greens. Below are the pictures.

After lunch we had a danced organized by the mission group and a number of gifts were given to the kids from Laura’s family and friends, some from Kampala and others from the USA. These included big cakes, Ice cream, Handkerchiefs, sweets, art supplies, shoes, sandals and  dresses donated to all the girls by Mrs. Karla Kensey, Eritrean Bread and many others. We later had an introduction and giving away of our own Laura Corcoran to Mr. Ambish Patel. The function was so colorful which ended with a dance.

We feel blessed already for loving us that much and for having all of us at heart. We can’t stop praying for you all every day.

Thanks Management.

April Newsletter 2018

Hello Everyone!

April was such a wonderful month with our Easter celebration. The celebration was so wonderful we felt changed after. The celebrations came along with a lot of stuff such as mass. After mass we had different meals such as matooke, rice, meat, pork, fish, G.nuts and soda. The whole celebration ended with a dance. A huge thank you to the Baker Family for sponsoring our Easter meal!

The gardens are doing well especially during this rainy season. Our volunteers are doing a great job. Alex, our Peace Corps Volunteer, planted sun flowers that she will be harvesting soon. Laura also introduced a new tree called a moringa tree that can be used to help improve the children’s nutrition. The banana plantation is doing well. The guavas have also grown, as well as plenty of papayas and pumpkins as shown below in the pictures.

Our children in King Solomon broke off for holidays. Their performance was good and we are sure they will be of help during this holiday. Thanks to everyone for helping us meet their school requirements and fees.

Thanks very much to everyone that is helping us meet Miryante’s children’s basic needs. We would be completely nothing and nowhere without you. God Bless.

March Newsletter 2018

Hello Everyone.

Greetings from Miryante Orphanage and Miryante Vocational School. The children are all in good health and all in school. We are glad to inform you that the kids are all very happy due to different programmes such as debate club, Sports clubs, Miryante choir, and watching movies over the weekend. The joy at Miryante can easily be told by the little nursery kids during break time as shown below.

We were also humbled to host one of Laura’s friends called Ruth and her family who celebrated their son’s birthday with our kids. The kids and staff at the orphanage were so grateful to host Ruth’s family and to share their birthday joy with our kids. They were also thankful to Ruth’s family for choosing Miryante as a place where they could celebrate. This really shows that Miryante is the best place to be. Ruth’s family donated clothes, sweets and cakes to the children as shown below.

The guardianship program is going on well as shown with big smiles below in the pictures. Madam Lydia managed to visit five families with nine of the children that we are helping under the program and the kids were very happy. It’s really very hard to get Isaac to smile but you can tell from the picture that Isaac couldn’t believe when he got a donation of a mattress, blanket, bed sheets, clothes and food. Isaac was so excited for receiving all of these things and this was such a big achievement for the family as we were told by the relatives. This was kind of a dream to Isaac since it was the first time he has owned a mattress. He was so excited that he wouldn’t even allow anyone else to touch his mattress.

Water is no longer a problem to us at Miryante especially during this rainy season when all the fifteen water tanks are full. The borehole is now more available and we are sure this will not be a problem anymore. We are really grateful for this donation and we would like to say thank you once again to our donors.

Thanks to everyone for loving Miryante!

FEBRUARY NEWSLETTER 2018

Hello everyone!

We are so grateful for the month of February with so many activities going on at the site. We have had over 30 new children joining the orphanage.

We are also grateful to our Peace Corps Volunteer Alex who started up a bible class every Thursday of the week. It really is a blessing seeing our children growing up with the fear of God and also praying for our donors that have provided for us generously just as shown in the picture below.

We are also grateful for our penpal program that is growing every day. This month we received a couple of art supplies from Amanda Hall for our children. It was such a great joy to our kids as shown below with a big smile.

We are also grateful to our well-wishers who have donated to the organization generously to help us improve and also come up with a number of projects as shown below.

The nursery class has been separated from the dining hall. This has been one of the challenges to our nursery teacher is that the pupils were having trouble concentrating in an open dinning hall. The teacher was also not comfortable teaching in the open dining hall because she could not leave her charts hanging up.

Our piggery unit has also been improved. Our pigs can no longer escape outside. All doors are now fixed with the floor also worked on.

Our rabbit project is now done with three rabbits for starters: one male and two females. We have just ordered for one female rabbit. Our plan is to see them multiply so that our kids can have enough meat every quarter of the year. The house is big enough to accommodate even 20 as shown below.

We have also been in position to improve our office by making more partitions and beautifying the office with artwork from the children. Below is the Library, Counselling room, social workers’ and volunteer room. We have enough space to enable our work go on well.

Water has been one of our biggest problem around the site. The one borehole couldn’t serve the purpose at all. Our borehole has been breaking at least two to three times a month and the cost of fixing has been very high and also the demand for water has also been increasing daily. Thanks to a donation from Inno-pak and well wishers, we received 15 water tanks, 5 of which are 10,000 liters and 10 which are 5,000 liters. All house have tanks including all dormitories at the orphanage, church, girls hostels, boys hostels, and the whole school including the teachers unit. We are so blessed as Miryante to have all this and we say thank you to the well-wisher that funded for this project.

Below is also our bio-gas project that was started last year and it’s now in its finishing stages. This has been our biggest challenge as Miryante organization we have completely run short of firewood as the organization grows bigger and there is no firewood available in the surrounding area. This is a problem already on site. We should be able to start using the biogas after two months. First the biogas chamber needs to be fed with human waste and animal waste, and then later it will produce enough gas that we can use for cooking. Below is how the whole construction took place. Also pictures are the trainings the children and caregivers received on what to feed it and not to feed it. Thanks to Fr. David at Sacred Heart Church in the Diocese of Crookston who fund raised for these efforts to save Miryante from its firewood problem.

We were able to have a reward program for our children to begin the year. The 2 children who serve as chapel leaders were given Bibles, Children who are Hygiene Captains were given racks to hang their knickers, the 3 best time keepers were awarded with wall clocks and the little ones received awards. This was the best way to thank them for good behaviour and also to keep things competitive for following rules.

During the last Saturday of the month we visited our children in King Solomon Secondary boarding school to check on their progress and all was well.

On the 28^th of February we were privileged to receive our volunteer’s husband at Miryante. He travelled all the way from India to come visit with a couple of things for our children such as balls and sweets. It was such a good time and the kids got to enjoy the Indian music especially when he sung with Alex and the kids also entertained them. This is now our culture in Miryante whenever we receive a visitor we get to entertain him or her.

We are also grateful to inform you that four of our students who sat for UBET (Technical School Certification Examinations) last year all passed and right now we have received a centre number for UBET. This mean that Miryante is now an official Technical School testing center, so our students can test from within instead of traveling to other schools for examinations. We are also grateful for our board members who help us to orient the new students during the second week of the school opening. Our technical school currently has 98 students and we expect more still to come from the community. Out of the 98, 23 are from the orphanage.

This is our second phase of the perma-garden program with our volunteer Alex supervising caregivers and the children per dorm. This is now a competition within the dormitories. A huge thanks to Alex for this project.

We are also happy to inform you that all our kids who received animal donations from their sponsors such as goats and heifers were labelled with tags. A big thanks to Alex and Laura for tagging the children’s goats. This will really help us to identify the livestock as we breed them and make sure the children keep their animals well. The children are very happy and we believe for the stubborn children, its one way to encourage them to not run away or cause mischief at the orphanage because they won’t want to leave their animals behind before finishing school. We believe it will be one way of keeping them around rather than running back on the streets. Thanks to the sponsors for the great job.

Thanks very much to everyone that is contributing towards Miryante’s shining brightly. God Bless.

January has been so busy for us here in Miryante. We have had several new children brought to Miryante by police and the probation office from street. We were able to find two homes where two of these kids originated from before joining the street and we are happy that they will have a home where we can resettle them after school.

We are also grateful to inform you that Miryante is growing and expanding in the number of services that we offer. Last year we started offering services such as food and scholastic materials to child-headed families in Kyaka II refugee camp under Angels Care School and the program is still running. We are able to provide these services on a monthly basis.

This year we have started a Guardianship or Foster Program for ten of our children that have lived with us in the orphanage for some time. It’s a pilot project that we are trying to run. One of Miryante’s social workers and a counsellor visit their homes and school on monthly basis to check on their progress at school and home. Miryante still provides food to support to them on monthly basis, bedding, and school fees which is paid direct to the school. We came up with this kind of arrangement so that in the future if the government decides to close orphans homes we have another option to continue the support for our orphaned children. We included Isaac, one of the children from Kyaka II Refugee Camp with severe medical complications on board for this program. Isaac is an orphaned boy who is aged 6 years now and we couldn’t keep him in the orphanage because he seriously needed special care. He weighs 89kgs and as Miryante has been providing support for him via a family he started walking at the beginning of this year.

Below are the 10 children we are sponsoring.    

Last year 9 of our pupils sat for PLE (Primary Leaving Examination) and 6 scored good grades and they were able to be promoted to high school. 3 joined Technical School at Miryante Vocational. It was such agreat joy. Therefore, currently we have 19 students that we are sponsoring in high school, another student is in St. Peter’s Technical School majoring in designing, one child is in a teaching collage, one is in the seminary and one is joining senior five for her high school. Therefore in total we have 23 of our children going to school at boarding schools.

Below is the new group pausing for a picture before setting off for school.

During January holiday when most of the kids were off for holidays, we renovated all the dormitories around the site and sprayed all the dormitories that are now looking much better as shown below in the pic.

We are also grateful to inform you how our Peace Corps Volunteer has been of help with training caregivers during this dry season of January with digging around perma-gardens. We saw that it is necessary to involve all caregivers in this training such that each of them trains her/ his house of children. Alex trained caregivers on how to manage these gardens despite of the drought with a number of green vegetables to help improve the diet of the children throughout the season and some of the gardens will be shown in our Feb letter and some of the vegetable that will be ready by that time despite the drought. Below is also one of our girls Marie who is interested in being a farmer involved in the caregivers’ training.

Thanks to our generous donors for helping to keep Miryante shining.

Thank You,

Management

December Newsletter 2017

December was such busy month with a lot of amazing things. All our kids broke off for holidays by early December and they were all promoted to other classes. When the children broke off our nurse and Alex our Peace Corps Volunteer came up with a mosquito net program to educate all the children about the dangers of sleeping without a mosquito net and also taught them how to hang and use mosquito nets as seen below.

This year, thanks to an outpouring of love and support, our children celebrated Christmas just like any other child. Our kids really feel loved when she or he gets something new on such a special day and this time round it was mega. A big thanks to individual sponsors who sent Christmas money for their kids to go shopping! These kids had such a wonderful Christmas.

Inno-Pak Ltd made a bonus donation to transport every single one of our kids to the  Mubende Market where they were able to make his or her choice of what to wear on Christmas day and New Year’s Day. The lucky ones who picked two items and still had balance had a chance of getting three items and also a pair of church shoes, sandals, belts for boys and towels for all. This took us four days of shopping with the help of some administrators and caregivers. It was a blast for the kids visiting some of the happening places in Kyegegwa for a snack on our way back after the shopping.  Unfortunately one of our boy got lost but he was found in the morning and also a few especially the little ones in the first trip lost their clothes as they were trying to fit shoes. Image one picking shoes and leaving clothes behind, so we had to do another shopping for extra three that had lost them. This was unbelievable for them to an extent that some thought they would miss out on the shoes. We have never had such an exciting day of shopping for the kids.

The shopping centre was 64kms from Miryante and this was such a nice experience to all our children driving them out of Kyegegwa district to another district to do shopping. It wasn’t easy for all the kids to make choice just like any person especially them being children and also being their first time to move out as shown below.

After our long waiting, the  church was blessed on Christmas day by the director Rev. Fr. Erineo Mushuhukye and that is where we celebrated mass. At least now the church is separated from the dining hall and their is respect for the chapel by the children. Both the children and the community were happy for such an achievement  and 14 of our children got baptised on Christmas day in our new church.

The preparations started with choir rehearsals by the children at the orphanage and they were so excited for such a long awaited day to celebrate mass in new clothes, shoes and new church as shown below.

After church the children had a very wonderful meal. Thanks to the Baker Family, each had bottle of soda, Irish potatoes, matooke, rice, beef, pork, G.nuts and fish. The celebrations went on well.

The year ended with a trip to the source of the Nile. This was just like a major night to both the kids and the caregivers because none of them thought they would get this change at any single moment in life. We had so many donations for this that we were able to take all 145 of the kids and caretakers, instead of one bus of the older children as we had originally planned. All the kids and the caregivers had a boat ride. It was a round trip but full of excitement. We paid for a guide to let the kids ask questions and get the real history of the place.

Thanks to everyone that has donated anything in kind to Miryante. Our children have never slept hungry, never lacked clothes or school fees. This is all because of you people. Thanks very much for having us at heart and giving us the best Christmas in memory.

Happy New year to you all God Bless!

November Newsletter 2017

Greetings from Miryante Home and School!

The children and staff from both school and home send you greetings. We are humbled to have your assistance and we greatly appreciate your love and kindness that you share with us every day. This has really been a progressive year for the Organization with a lot of good things taking place here. We are happy to have a home that can provide basic needs to our children and also a home that everyone looks at in the community.

A report about our children

All the children are in good health and all going to school.  We have nine candidates that sat for primary seven exit exams. These exams determine if they will be able to continue on to Secondary School. The little children that cannot walk a long distance study in the dining hall at the orphanage in our nursery school. The children are all happy and they all feel blessed for you changing their lives. They now see a bright future ahead of them. This comes with a big smile we share with you.

Farming!

The children managed to plant three acres of beans with the help of the caretakers. The harvest was good despite too much rain. We are also now milking 9 cows and this has helped to improve the health of our children especially the little ones.

We have managed to receive a number of donations this month as shown below; A donation from the NGO Feed my Starving Children gave us 80 boxes of manna packed food. This food is nutritionally fortified and we feed it to the children who come to us malnourished. Each box contains 36 packs and this will take us for 6 months. Feed my Starving Children has promised to add us some more packs after six months.

We have also received a donation to buy text books from Vision Complex Limited Co. This donation helped to photo copy over 80 text books to help us at the technical school.

Dr. Steve, Laura’s uncle, also visited with the wife Janet and his sister Marty and her husband Boggie, and their son Iggie. They donated a couple of things including: Clothes for the kids, art supplies, phones for office use, DVD player for the kids to watch movies as shown below.

Thank you to everyone for their outpouring of support this month!

Management

OCTOBER  NEWSLETTER 2017

Greetings from Miryante Home and School!

The children and staff from both school and home send you greetings. We are humbled to have your assistance and we greatly appreciate your love and kindness that you share with us every day. This has really been a progressive year for the Organization with a lot of good things taking place here. We are happy to have a home that can provide basic needs to our children and also a home that everyone looks at in the community.

A report about our children

We have got two candidates sitting for senior four final exams, nine sitting for primary seven leaving exams and four sitting for UBTEB (Uganda Businesses and Technical Examination Board). Their mocks were promising and we are praying hard that they perform well and get promoted to other levels. Several people have prayed for them and wished them success during their exams and one of them was Phionah Nalubega, an employee of Aptech Africa who came to visit the kids with Laura. They also came along with other friends who donated clothes and sweets to the kids. This was accompanied by a dance where the Schafer Family made a donation to hire a DJ to come play music.

Farm

Our cattle project is growing big. We are excited to inform you that currently five of our cows gave birth and we are now milking five cows that are giving milk to kids and we are expecting more to give birth.

Miryante Christmas Trip!

We wanted to try something a little different for Christmas this year. After surveying the kids, we got the feedback that they really wanted to take a trip to see the Nile River. The children at Miryante rarely get to travel and see a lot of the attractions that tourists see when they visit Uganda. If anyone might want to contribute to this donation, please let us know. Donations can be made directly through the website via the ‘administration’ section. The cost of the trip is $580, which includes renting a bus, meals for the day, entrance to see the source of the Nile, and a short boat ride. Together we are working towards this goal and we would be thankful for any contributions towards this!

Thank you everyone for your support!

AUGUST NEWSLETTER 2017

Hello everyone!

August has been a blessed month with alot of stuff happening at Miryante. Such as a couple of visitors and new children joining Miryante family as others depart from the project.

The children are very fine and they send everyone out there greetings. The children had a very short holiday of only three weeks. There performance was promising and we are praying hard that they keep it up even in this coming term of promotion. On 18/8/2017 our technical school closed.

The children are so happen and appreciative to all their sponsors and pen pals out there. Almost all the kids have received a number of donations from their sponsors directly to them (children). The children do pray for you all out there for the support that you send to us here every day.

We can’t imagine where all these wonderful loving children could be by now. Two months back we had serious famine in the region, but at Miryante we could have all the three meals a day: Breakfast, lunch and dinner. Many families with both parents living were starving. Our kids are happy to be here because of your support. None of them regrets. This is now a challenge that even after the children finish school, and they depart from the project some don’t want to go and create space for others.

Even for the child-headed families in Kyaka 11 refugee camp didn’t go hungry during that drought, thanks to support we have received for that program. For Kyaka we have now expended the program to providing scholastic materials like books, pens and uniforms. A huge thanks to the McEwen Family that has been instrumental in helping us provide this support for these kids.

During holidays our children had a couple of programs of site that really occupied them and kept them very busy daily. These activities included Bible classes, debate club, garden work, drama club, sports, and Miryante choir. A number of caregivers have been involved as supervisors and have helped with painting classes and nature classes which have been managed and supervised by Alex Rausch our Peace Corps Volunteer.

DEBATE CLUB

We also received a couple of visitors as we mentioned earlier. Alex Rausch our Peace Corps Volunteer who has been with us a year at Miryante. Her family visited and brought us a number of items for both kids and caregivers such as balls, sweets, clothes and art supplies. They really enjoyed their stay at Mityante and enjoyed the dance too.

We also received a mission group to Uganda (Miryante) 2017. The group was led by Laura’s mother and it had four members these included; Fr. David, Ms. Amanda, Ms. Marie and Mum Diane. Amanda Zurface and Fr. David conducted Theology of the Body lessons with all the children divided into different age groups so that the children could learn about respecting themselves and their bodies. The mission group also blessed the kids and caregivers with a number of things such as head torches for the caregivers to assist them in the night as they move around to help the children. A couple of balls were brought for kids, Clothes for all the kids, bags and shoes, Art supplies for all the children, soap and lotions. They also organized a dance party for the kids were they hired a DJ with a music system for the kids to dance. The children also entertained the visitors with our traditional dance. We had mass with the team that was led by Rev. Fr. David before they left.

Thank you for everyone who is supporting us in so many ways! We are thankful for all the love that everyone is sharing with our children. Thank you so much!!!