Good Bye Slums. Help 40 Uganda Women Build Homes.

I visited our Ugandan women in JInja again in early September and we made much progress on resolving many details of how the project, home construction and even the operation of the project after homes are constructed will all work. At this point there is much "behind the scenes" details being discussed and resolved.  All this work should help assure a smoother process once building actually takes place.  The ladies are beginning to finally be able to visualize how all this will work and to begin to imagine what life will be like once they are in their new homes.

It is much like the two photos I've attached to this report which helps visualize how in our first home phase of 10 to 12 homes, We'll first construct them, and then the ten to twelve women's group members who are selected will move in at about the same time.  The first phase of women will be a sort of pioneers in this new land. As we look at the twelve women and their families who are in the first photo, we would like to share with you the story of one of them: Alum and three of her younger children who are in the upper right collage photo. 

Alum has six children ranging in age from 4 years old to age 19 and recently moved to Jinja from northern Uganda. Her hausband, who was a fisherman died in 2011.  Her husband's family then sent her away.  She despaired.  She came to Jinja where she eventually joined the women's beading group.  She now had hope and besides doing beading, also sells silverfish from the lakeshore.  She likes it in Jinja and says she will not move back to the north.  She is working hard so she can own her own home.

Links:

• Outreach Uganda web site
• Testimony and Story of Alum on our YouTube Channel

• Home Ownership Phase 1 -10 to 12 Homes to be Built (PDF)
  

Boundary marking of our home ownership project's land was completed in April. While the architect is finalizing the development plan for the project, we were working on fencing the entire boundary of our land if it was not fenced already. Most of this work occurred during June with completion by early July.  Fencing is an extremely important step of the project to help assure that no other people try to encroach on the land by planting crops or doing other things that might delay the beginning of actual project construction.

In addition, the fencing helps prevent local animals from invading the land and destroying the temporary crops that our Ugandan women are growing on certain portions of the land as it awaits development. I personally visited the land in May during my recent trip to Uganda and saw several of our Ugandan women hard at work with some of their family members weeding crops that they had planted.

The next step which we expect to begin during August will be to construct a temporary storage/shelter building on the land so that it can house construction materials in one portion of the building while also allowing a couple of security personnel to stay on the land during construction and monitor activity on a daily basis. During this same time period and continuing into September, we will be working on getting electricity and piped water to the land.

Like Nabatanzi in the photo, our women have been continuing to save money from their business earnings for down payments on their homes.  At the present time, we are excited that six women have already achieved the savings goal for the down payment amount for a single home. Several other women are very close to the goal.  We expect to build the homes in phases of 10 to 12 homes at a time.

Stay tuned as we continue to make progress on this important project to help our Ugandan women leave the slums forever!

Links:

• Outreach Uganda web site