So, why & so what?

Nearing the midway point of my time in Uganda it is shameful not to have mentioned the main purpose of my trip, the work I am doing. For as well as having a blast careering around town on motorbikes, camping out in the wilderness, learning to salsa and so on, I am also being put to work at a very special place. Childs i Foundation is a charity which was set up to deal with the significant problem of child abandonment in Kampala. In the absence of a welfare state desperate parents abandon their babies at an alarming rate, especially if the child has a disability.

The Childs i social workers receive calls from police stations and hospitals to inform them when a 0-2 year old has been abandoned and the charity takes the child into its 'Malaika babies home'. This is a building with capacity for 25 babies at any one time and it is currently full. The children are first and foremost nursed back to good health as far as possible and the social workers work to establish whether the child can return to its parents or extended family, or if not they will search for an adoptive Ugandan family. The home aims to resettle the children in a family within 6 months of being taken in. Across town is Malaika House, where mothers go with their babies to work together with the social workers and vocational trainers to get themselves on a sound footing in order to avoid reaching the point hit by the mothers of the 25 at the babies home. Thus the 2 strands of care and prevention are addressed.

The organisation was set up a couple of years ago by Lucy Buck, a young British woman, who had spent a lot of time working with this issue in Uganda and was compelled to try her own approach. What she has done in a few years is remarkable.

My role out here has been to implement a structured 'Learning by Play' programme at the babies home and work alongside the carers to get it embedded into a daily routine. We have set up a schedule so that at certain times throughout the day the babies of different age groups are brought together for focused sessions of educational play. We're doing pretty well with it I think! Circle Time now has a good turn out as the word has got out among the ranks of the 1 year olds, and the afternoon 'messy play' sessions for the 2 year olds is getting oversubscribed as they push their way towards the nursery area for finger painting or play dough! (There are actually only 4 who fit this age group, but the crowds at the baby barrier grows by the day....). I am enjoying getting back in touch with the old 'Wheels on the Bus', 'Row row row your boat', 'If you're happy and you know it', and of course the classic 'Head, shoulders, knees and toes' routines – good training for entertaining my hordes of potential offspring in years to come!

Not having spent any real time with babies since my lovely big bear of a brother was a tiny sprog 20 years ago, this has all been very new for me, but it is a real pleasure and is coming pretty naturally I think. (If the charity considered international adoption for the babies, I think I'd be in real danger of bringing gorgeous prima donna Cissy home with me! Luckily though, she will be going back to her Dad before long, so it'll be just me getting off the plane this time).

The charity does really excellent work and is in continuous need of extra funding in order to maintain what it does and to extend to areas where it has potential to make real changes to the lives of those it seeks to help, to effect change in government policy and influence local and national practice, so very needed in this country. Take a look around their website if interested http://www.childsifoundation.org/ and if you are looking for a good cause to help http://www.childsifoundation.org/give/ they and so many others would welcome & appreciate it hugely :)