Crisis Centre for abandoned/orphaned babies Uganda

Our Baby Girls are doing well - Each with their own Nafasi New Chance - Thanks to You our Amazingly Generous Donors 

2018 is flying by and life is as busy as ever at Nafasi!  We continue to care for our babies and infants and our dedicated staff work hard to ensure that each child can be placed in a stable and loving ‘forever family’ and have the opportunity to develop to their full potential.

In our last report we told you the stories of four baby girls who all arrived tiny and extremely vulnerable. We are now so happy to let you see an update photo of them and tell you how well they are each doing! Thank you all for your continued support in making this all possible – it is down to you that we can put food on the table, provide a warm and clean cot at night and most importantly give the care and love that our staff show these precious children!

Looking left to right on the photo you first see Baby L. She arrived at Nafasi only 5 months old and was very malnourished and underweight.  She was way behind in her development, but thanks to the specialist care she has received she is making a really good recovery. She has gained weight and made positive strides in her development and social skills. We are particularly encouraged to see that she is now enjoying interacting with the other children and care givers.

Next in the photo line-up is Baby M, who is with us at Nafasi until her teenage mum and foster family have sufficient resources so that she can be cared for by them at home. In our last report we told you how Baby M had learned to crawl, although only backwards – and she is certainly continuing to show her individuality! She can now crawl at speed and is starting to take steps when supported. She is clearly the most dominant of the four and when others get in her way she shows them so! She loves her food and only cries when her dish is empty! She is happy and cheerful, and her huge smile melts the hearts of all our visitors.

Baby P is next in our line-up and has been with us at Nafasi since she was less than a month old. She was dangerously malnourished when she first arrived as her 17-year-old young mum had died the day after she was born, and her family could not even afford to buy milk for her. Our Nafasi staff had to work round the clock to keep her alive and it is thanks to their skill and dedication that she has survived some serious infections, some of which needed treatment and stays in hospital. We are delighted that is now able to sit up, crawl, pull herself up to stand and is even making first attempts at walking. She is also a lot stronger and less susceptible to illnesses. She is a joyful little girl who greets everyone with a big smile. The Nafasi social workers are in close contact with her grandparents and plans are in place to reunite her with them very shortly.

Last but not least is Baby D, who came to Nafasi with her vulnerable 13-year-old teen Mum. Both are doing very well!  Baby D is now a happy, smiling child who has learned to crawl and will now pull herself up to standing whenever she can.  She’s very cheerful, loves playing with toys, smiles when anyone approaches her and particularly recognises the attention that she gets from her Mum in the evenings and weekends. Mum is now settled into her new class at the Mission School and working hard to catch up on her education. She has received extra books from a sponsor to help her with her studies and you can see her doing homework with her friend on one of the photos.

See for yourself what great progress they have made. On the original photo line-up you see them from left to right baby M, P, D and L.

In our other photo you will see the colourful container that stands in the Nafasi garden. Thanks to generous donations to a special appeal we have now been able to build an extension, which provides a sheltered outdoor sitting area, and a roof over the whole structure. Inside a partition wall has been added to create two rooms, one is now used for storage and the other for displaying and selling craft items that have been made by the teen Mums in our Nafasi Community Support Programme.

We are continually considering how we can develop our work, and to do this we need to keep building our donor base to improve our long term financial stability.

Our staff and volunteers in Holland are busy preparing for 3 days of fundraising and networking at a Pentecost Weekend event and we are excited to announce that at that event we are going to be launching our ‘Adopt a Cot’ campaign!

This campaign is going to give our supporters the chance to be a very special part of our work because ‘Adopt a Cot’ contributions will be linked directly to the monthly running costs of an individual Cot for a baby or infant in our charge.

We’ll be sending out much more detailed information and explaining how everyone can get involved after the launch weekend so please look out for that and find out how you can join in!

We are so grateful to each and every one in whatever capacity you can support us and thank you again for giving all our babies and their mothers a Nafasi New Chance.