STAY TUNED FOR ONGOING UPDATES...We are committed to supporting our sponsored students and their families throughout this crisis. Thank you to everyone who is generously aiding our efforts.
June 22nd 2020:
The following measures have been taken/enforced:
1. Curfew time will stay from 7pm to 6.30am. The measure is both a security and health intervention.
2. Private vehicles can now carry four (up from three passengers) including the driver. They should observe SOPs like wearing masks.
3. Boda bodas. Despite innovations like barriers between rider and passenger, they remain a high risk carrier. Bodas will stay carrying cargo, not passengers.
4. Places of worship will stay closed. They’d pose a difficulty in contact tracing and are a high risk contamination area.
5. Arcades will stay closed. However, relevant agencies will work with arcade owners to pilot prevention procedures to inform future relaxation.
6. Mobile markets, just like the arcades, will stay closed. They are high risk areas, present difficulty in contact tracing, etc.
7. Hawkers(ing), vendors should be discouraged. They get in contact with many people, can’t be traced, etc. They should be targeted with information.
8. Repatriation of bodies for burial in Uganda. They can be repatriated but with strict SOPs from health and foreign affairs ministries. E.g. Body must be wrapped in a waterproof body bag, placed in a zinc lined coffin and an outer metal or wooden box.
9. Salons will stay closed. Activities here involve close contact between/among people. Contact tracing would be difficult too.
10. Travel in and out of Uganda for medical reasons should be barred, in principle. However, Ministry of Health and other agencies can handle case by case.
11. Opening border districts. More mapping has been to determine which border districts should be opened and which stay locked. Those that will stay locked are:
a. Rakai, Kyotera, Amuru, Buikwe, Gulu, Arua, Adjumani, Moyo, and Nebbi (clusters of infections under investigation)
b. Zombo, Adjumani and Arua (districts with refugees, need more testing)
c. Busia and Bulisa (districts with major border/water points).
The rest of the border districts can be opened but with continued vigilance. They are: Amudat, Bududa, Bukwo, Bundibugyo, Buvuma, Hoima, Isingiro, Kaabong, Kabale, Kalangala, Kanungu, Kasese, Kikuube, Kisoro, Kitgum, Koboko, Kween, Lamwo, Maracha, Mayuge, Moroto, Namayingo, Namisindwa, Ntoroko, Ntungamo, Pakwach, Rubanda, Rubirizi, Rukiga, Rukungiri, Sironko, and Yumbe.
12. Education institutions will stay closed. Its still too risky to open schools. In the meantime, government will launch a big long-distance education programme through radios. Each homestead will get a radio set.
13. The Independent Electoral Commission, after consulting scientists, has proposed a “scientific” electoral process. Ugandans should support this exercise.
14. Ministries of Education and Gender should register people affected by the lockdown, such as the salon operators, private universities, private secondary schools, private primary schools, etc., so that they can be helped, not with free money, but cheap capital when their activities resume or even help them to do other activities.
June 4th 2020:
In a bid to empower guardians economically during the lock-down, we are adapting our Family Empowerment Program so that families can work on projects from the safety of their home and/or in small group training sessions. We have begun by identifying guardians who are already skilled in certain Income Generating Activities (IGAs) who can train other child guardians in the Kyotera and Mukono vicinity.
May 26th 2020:
May 4th 2020:
1. Food markets will stay open
2. Airport and borders stay closed
3. Wholesale shops to open
4. Hardware shops to open
5. Garages to open
6. Metal and wood workshops to open
7. Insurance providers to function
8. Quotas of lawyers to be permitted to work
9. Restaurants to open, but only for takeaways
10. Warehouses to open
11. Schools plus other facilities that attract large numbers to stay closed
12. Public and private cars still not operational (only private cars with government-issued stickers are permitted to move to facilitate those working, use marked buses, walk or cycle)
13. Mandatory to wear cloth masks in public
All other earlier protective measures stay in place for another 14 days
April 27th 2020:
As of Sunday, all 200 of our families in Uganda picked-up their Emergency Relief Bundle. This was all made possible thanks to the generous and loving support of our devoted child sponsors and donors! Our sponsored students and their relatives are simply overwhelmed by your gift.
We know families are suffering everywhere and so we thank you with our whole heart for sending relief and delivering hope to Uganda.
April 17th 2020:
Gratefully, thanks to our many sponsors and supporters like you, we have been able to distribute Emergency Relief Bundles filled with food and essential items to relieve their immediate hunger (as you can see in the collage above).
As families picked up their bundle from our merchant suppliers this past week, they were overwhelmed with gratitude. Many, many tears of relief were shed. They now have food security for one whole month!
Your support is making an overwhelming impact. Nevertheless, the Ugandan president just issued a mandate for 21 additional days of lockdown. This measure is necessary to reduce community spread, but prolonged restrictions will undoubtedly plunge vulnerable families deeper into poverty.
“In Uganda, it’s real. Our families are struggling – so much that they actually came up with a name for the hunger they are experiencing. They are calling it ‘Hovid-2020,’ literally meaning ‘Hunger virus 2020’. Because as much as they are feeling the COVID pinch, they are even more worried about hunger…It’s getting more dangerous than the coronavirus.”
April 2nd, 2020:
Our staff in Uganda was ready and willing to risk exposure to the virus in order to deliver these bundles directly to our most critically and moderately vulnerable families. A true testament to their heart and heroism! However, it is now illegal for them to even step foot in the villages where our children live.
Effective April 1st all people-to-people movement is banned and the Ugandan President has criminalized the act of delivering food even to the most vulnerable populations for fear of spreading the virus (Please scroll down for a full list of government ordered bans).
We can assure you that despite this set-back, we are now partnering with local food suppliers to ensure that our families receive the help they so desperately need – and that you so graciously gave!
As the coronavirus spreads throughout Uganda, the health and medical needs of our families will continue to grow exponentially. Only families with a home garden or agriculture-based Income Generating Activity are provided some protection, but even that may not be enough to support them long-term. We need your help to meet these growing demands and to save lives.
April 1st, 2020:
The situation in Uganda is evolving rapidly and we are doing everything in our power to adapt to the challenges. On behalf of our team, I would like to thank you for your support during this unprecedented and tumultuous time. We hope that the answers to the following questions will help clarify our current approach to supporting our sponsored students and their families. Please reference back to this blog post for ongoing updates.
Our initial plan was to purchase the food and supplies for the Emergency Relief Bundles and have our staff physically distribute them to our families – ensuring that priority is given to those most at risk of hunger. However, food distributions have been banned countrywide as of April 1st. If any of our team members were to try delivering food or essential items right now, they could face prison time or even an attempted murder charge for potentially spreading the virus.
Therefore, we are now working directly with reputable suppliers in areas where we have several guardians. We will send a list of approved items we are purchasing and the names of the guardians who will pick-up the supplies individually from the shop. We are doing this to ensure accountability, but also because some of these families simply cannot wait. They need the help now. For those families who are so scattered that we cannot use one supplier, we will send them mobile money directly with the list of approved food and essential items. They will be asked to keep all receipts to ensure accountability.
Many of the guardians and relatives of our sponsored children are illiterate and need to be educated on sanitation measures to curb the disease. Unfortunately, with social gatherings no longer permitted, we are having to do this remotely via one-on-one phone calls to students and their families. In Uganda, almost everyone has access to a mobile phone. You can buy a basic flip-phone for as little as $7 and purchase calling cards everywhere. Even in rural villages, you can almost always get a cellphone signal.
On these calls, our staff has been sharing cleaning guidelines and encouraging them to tune into radio or tv programs to stay informed if at all possible (however, because we serve a vulnerable population, over 50% have no access to internet or television). We also created a WhatsApp group for those with smart phones, so we can regularly share awareness information. Again, the vast majority of our students do not have access to the internet at home, so we are working on ways we can extend our communications either by partnering with local leaders or food vendors to distribute information.
All primary, secondary, university and tertiary institutions were ordered to close by Friday, March 20th for the duration of one month. If all goes according to plan, Term 1 will reopen April 27th – June 12th. Term 2 will be June 22nd – September 4th and 3rd term will be September 21st – December 19th. If school closures are extended beyond 30 days, we will update you on the new term dates.
The Ugandan Ministry of Education is organizing lessons to reach all students and has secured free learning airtime on radio and TV broadcast. Their hope is to engage students of all classes in an organized manner. More information about these programs will be forthcoming. The Ministry has also suspended any form of examinations during the pandemic. Schools will only have one mock exam, which will occur at the end of term 2.
Some teachers were able to prepare take-home packages for the students and all teachers have been encouraged to prepare materials during the shutdown. We have been calling and urging our students to revise what they already have learned, but also encouraging them not to stress too much. The physical, mental and emotional well-being of our students is our greatest concern at this time.
Food and hygiene products are the most urgent and immediate need, but families will also need help with healthcare costs, medicine, money for hospital transport, clean drinking water and sanitation products.
In addition, our staff is also in need of protective gear to use once the travel and social gathering bans have been lifted so they can safely check-in on our families. It would cost no more than $25 to provide this protection for one staff member we have 6 staff members who can assist with field distributions. A donation of any amount is greatly appreciated and will be used where needed most urgently.
March 31st, 2020:
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni addressed the nation on March 30th to outline government measures being used to stop the spread of COVID-19. In particular, banning the use of private vehicles and criminalizing the act of delivering food to vulnerable populations has had a significant impact on our Emergency Relief Bundle initiative. We are still committed to sending immediate relief to families and will update you on our adapted plan shortly.
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