Good Bye Slums. Help 40 Uganda Women Build Homes.

The summer is an exciting time of year for us. This is when we work with the Jinja women on new ideas for crafts they can make that we can buy from them and then sell back in the U.S. It's very important because these craft purchases by Outreach Uganda help provide important funding for the Jinja women to use to expand and stabilize their businesses as well as save to build a home. Having a stable and successful small businesses in Uganda is key to helping each woman eventually be able to afford her own home!

Together we can help build homes for these women! It's a combination of: 1. income from our bead and craft purchases 2. having stable businesses the women can do in Uganda all year long and 3. additional funding made possible through these project and other funding sources

Selling these craft product purchases back in the U.S. is always a delicate balance of having a good selection of old favorites combined with some new exciting items that our customers here have not seen before! Happy customers here buying more crafts means we can increase our purchases from the Jinja women so they earn more money!

We'll soon be traveling to Uganda so we can work in person with the Jinja women on these new ideas. Attached are a couple of photos from past years when the women are busily making paper beads to be used in many different jewelry and accessory projects. We look forward to our next report to you where we can update you on our new ideas for the 2023 holiday season.

Thank you for your support of this home building project!  If you know someone else, that would like to donate to help women with their home down payment or help with a small business loan, please forward this email to them. And visit our web site to see their beautiful crafts that we sell!

Links:

• See our work in photos
• See Crafts We Purchase from Jinja Artisans

We visited with the Jinja women's group in August 2022 and will be visiting them soon in 2023!  Like this photo from our August 2022 trip, it gives us valuable time to talk directly with the women and find out issues they are facing with their businesses. 

During our time together in August, the women shared how their businesses are doing, and the issues they faced during the prior two years during the pandemic. They told about how their businesses were affected by the lockdowns and business curtailments in Uganda.  We learned that many women had to pivot to other sorts of businesses during the panedemic because their original business became too difficult. We learned that a lot of their customers had to buy less from them or not at all because they had no money.

2022 was a recovery year for many of their businesses and that recovery continues today.  We want the women's businesses to be strong so that ithe business can provide some cash flow that the women can apply this towards being able to afford a better home as part of our home building program.

So in 2023, we continue to help the women strategize how to strengthen their businesses and/or switch to new businesses which will be more profitable. There is still much work to be done in this area! We look forward to being in Uganda again in 2023 and continuing this process.

We remain optimistic that home building can begin later this year. In the meantime, we will continue to use some of the funding from this project in ways that will help the women strengthen their businesses.

Links:

• See our work in photos
• Learn more--visit our web site

In August and September, Carol Davis and one teacher volunteer spent six weeks in Uganda. Part of this time was spent with the women in Jinja where the home building project is located.  The Jinja women were very excited to have Trisha, the teacher volunteer, hold daily classes to help them with their English speaking skills as well as work on important math skills such as counting and adding.

The women who were interested in improving their English were divided into 3 groups of beginning, intermediate and advanced depending on their skill level.  Learning English is very important to help the women be successful in their small busineses. This is because they live in Jinja where very few people speak their native language from northern Uganda. 

So improving their English skills will help them improve their ability to talk to their customers as well as help make sure their suppliers do not cheat them when they make purchases.  The women know that they need to have successful businesses to help them be able to save money for their future homes and to afford the other costs associated with having a home. 

Currently, some of the funding for this project is being used to help provide help to some of the poorer women with health issues so they can stabilize their businesses and help recover from the difficulties they experienced when there were lockdowns in Uganda due to the coronavirus in 2020 and 2021.

We thank you for your support in making this project possible and with helping the women improve their businesses and household cash flow.  We hope to begin home building later in 2023.

Links:

• Visit our web site
• See our work in photos

In early June 2022, we began finishing up project items that were incomplete when the Coronavirus shutdowns began in March 2020, One of those important items for our home building project related to the second access road to our project that was being finished in early 2020.  We're happy to report that we now have a very secure metal gate to secure the access to our property from this second road access point.

The gate was made and installed during June 2022 along with a small amount of fencing and posts as well as cemented metal poles that attach to the gate. We're very glad that this work was able to be completed so that our property remains secure as we finalize the remaining common area items.

As long as there are no more Covid-related shutdowns, we expect that home building could begin next year. As we mentioned in our last report, we will be traveling to Uganda next month to be on site and speak with the project architect, and other key people involved with this project so we can determine a realistic time frame for our project tasks. We also need to assess the effect of inflation on our expected project costs.

We'll report more in our next update after we return from Uganda!

In the meantime, we are continuing to purchase crafts from our women artisans to help them with improving their cash flow. We also continue to use some project monies to make additional business loans to the women artisans so that they have funds to strengthen their local businesses and help them recover from the difficulties of the lockdowns, restrictions and general lack of customers during these past two years.

Thanks for your patience and support as we determine a new timetable to forge ahead with this project now that things in Uganda are beginning to return to a new normal.

Links:

• Our Web Site
• See our work in photos

As we mentioned in our last report, the coronavirus restrictions, lockdowns, supply shortages and high prices continue to keep our home building project on hold while we await more favorable conditions to finish the common area improvements and to start the actual home building process.

We are still optimistic that this could occur later this year. We are planning on traveling to Uganda late summer to further assess the situation and get the building phase started as soon as we can without undue risk.  However, we do not want to become impatient and start it too soon and then be faced with shutdowns, labor shortages and out of control prices.

While we wait, we see that our biggest help would be to provide some loan and/or grant funding for the women's businesses to help stabilize them and allow them to forge ahead as Uganda begins to loosen restrictions and open up again. The loans would be forgiven provided certain conditions are met and would help the women be better positioned to save for their portions of the needed down payment monies for their home. It would also allow their businesses to provide a more steady source of income for their daily needs including food and medicines.

Currently, our Jinja artisans' small businesses in Uganda are struggling, and providing little cash flow for them and their families.  The sporadic lockdowns and curfews have made it difficult for them to run their businesses and for their customers to have money to buy necessities. These businesses are important to both the women and our home building project because in better times, the small scale businesses provide a source of income for the women which would allow them save money for home down payments. And in the future, to enable them to make payments on a small home mortgage.

So, we ask for your continued patience with this very important project as we wait for the conditions to be right to move forward with the actual building process.  In the meantime, we will be using additional funds generated for this project to help make some strategic small business loans and grants to help stabilize the women's small scale businesses in Uganda.

We're sharing a couple of craft making photos from early December when the Ugandan women were working on silk scarf tie dyeing. They make many patterns and colors of the silk scarves including the turquoise one shown. 

Please feel free to forward this report to friends, families and coworkers who might be interested in supporting our loan and grant efforts to help the women weather the Covid storm and continue their businesses!

Links:

• Our web site
• See our work in photos