Wise Choices For Life.

We are back from our training in Kampala, and we have gained so much from this training.
We spent one week at the African village resort in Mukono, where we did some intensive training on a program called Wise Choices for Life.

Basically the program wants to address the causes of the many maternal and infant deaths in Uganda, as well as the amount of orphanages and orphans in the country.
The program wants to give local people knowledge and life skills so that they can prevent themselves from falling into the poverty trap, and take care of their own family ... instead of being an aid organisation that comes in to help treat the symptoms of poverty.
You can watch a video here to get a bit of a taste of the program.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNiCJwm1kqQ

The program is very dense with a lot in it. It covers topics and issues like relationships, marriage, parenting, unfaithfulness, abuse, life skills, reproductive health, family planning, antenatal and postnatal care, abortion, STD's, causes of maternal and infant deaths, increasing population, environmental issues and so on.
The program is delivered from a Christian world view, and discusses what our loving Father God wants for His children in the areas of relationships and health.
So many of the issues we deal with here in our communities is touched upon in this program.

Although a lot of the medical information was not entirely new to me, I think the the main things I got away from this program was it's intended focus, and the way it gets the information across.

I have already said that the program aims to give local people knowledge and skills to prevent them from needed help from aid organisations or NGO's. I find this a great approach. So much of the work we do at YSU feels like patch up work .. or healing / restoration work.
This is vitally important, but sometimes we think 'How can we reach people so we don't have to help someone who has gone through hell and back and needs healing, and instead help them in preventing these traumatic things from happening to them in the first place"
We feel like Wise Choices for Life is that gap that we were missing, the thing we have been wondering about.

The way the program is set out and given to the local people is the other thing I got from it.
There are many different lessons in the three module's, but throughout all the lessons the information, problems and solutions are learnt through a combination of discussion, debate, drama, music and more.
The program is very interactive and helps local people feel like they have contributed to coming up with the solutions to a lot of their issues.

We are very excited to start using this as a tool for YSU, and we will begin this with our tailoring class starting next month.

We thank the WCFL team and Marg for running this conference! We also thank Emily who helped sponsor Aggie and I so we could attend the conference.
Oh and we should thank Douglas, who left his home at 6.30 am every morning to come and spend the day babysitting Ethan at the hotel, so Aggie and I could go through the conference undisturbed.

Thanks everyone.

Quick update

Just a short update!

We have enjoyed the last few weeks here in Uganda, with both Andrew my pastor coming to visit, and then my mother and my auntie coming for a week.

I know my Mum loved every moment with her little grandson, and we spent most of our time together and enjoying taking Ethan out.

Ethan has been enjoying swimming a lot, he loves the water so much. He is very active and is standing by himself now. We have to be careful and make sure certain things are out of his reach. He has broken a glass or two in the last few months.

Agnes and I are off to a full weeks seminar training in mukono tomorrow. We will be staying there for the week, while we learn how to be facilitators of the wise choices for life training seminor.
This looks at healthy families, issues around maternal health, problems encountered with child birth and child rearing etc.
This will be a great training for us, because Agnes and I often joke and say we feel we are becoming community health workers when it comes to women and their babies.

Even a few weeks ago I had a call in the middle of the night for one of our young tailoring girls who gave birth a month ago. She was worried because she thought the baby was sick.
It didn't sound too serious and I was almost ready to go back to bed, but I knew I would feel horrible if something happened.
Farouk and I went and checked the baby on the boda boda, she seemed fine, she had just fed and didn't have a temperate.
But since she was staying in a small room by herself, and she was a bit scared being this is her first child (she is quite young) she came and stayed in our spare room at our house for the rest of the night with the baby .. so she felt like people were close encase something was wrong.
She took the child to the hospital in the morning, and it seemed that the child had septicemia. Which is quite serious. Although the child never had any type of temperature.

We look forward to learning all that we can during this training.

Farouk and I also went for a one day camping trip up to sipi falls. The place is beautiful up there. I have also been enjoying my new DSLR camera as well and have had made a short little clip with it that can be seen here.

https://vimeo.com/189791644

If you could pray for rain in Uganda that would be appreciated as well. We have had one of the worst wet seasons in years, and many people have planted crops only to see them die. Often this is their only food and money source, so people are in very terrible conditions right now.
You can read more about this situation here.
http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/Millions-of-Ugandans-in-45-districts-starving--says-govt/688334-3440478-8uj0buz/index.html

Thank you again for all of you who support us rather financially or with prayers!