by Prossy NyafonoBenjamin House Ministries Storyteller This is Annet Nambi. Annet is a single mother of six living in Ntinda. She is also a small business owner and runs a small restaurant along Kigoowa Road in Kampala, Uganda, offering breakfast, lunch, and dinner to her clients. When we met Annet in 2017, three of her children -- Shamirah Nalukwago, Shamim Nackchwa, and Sharifah Namuli -- had been chosen for sponsorship and she was working as a food vendor in the city. The hours and the distance kept her from spending hardly any time with her youngest children. Annet's sponsored daughters: Shamirah Nalukwago, Shamim Nackchwa, and Sharifah Namuli Annet shared that when her BHM child advocate, Susan, emphasized the need for closer involvement between Annet and her children; Annet began contemplating finding work or starting a business closer home. She found a space, saved up, and with a loan of 800,000 UGX (about $218 USD) Annet finally stepped up to the challenge of opening her own business! She put up a makeshift structure and stocked it with the most essential items to kickstart her restaurant. It's been 1 month now and Annet says she is able to monitor her children all day, repay a weekly fee to clear the loan, and even makes enough money to save with the Parents of Sponsored Children in Ntinda savings group. Child Sponsorship doesn't simply put a child in school. It gives our child advocates an opportunity to share what Christ-like parenting looks like. Without child sponsorship, Annet may never have considered changing her job and starting a business in order to better pursue her family. We are so grateful to be a part of stories like hers and cannot wait for the day when her family becomes fully self-sufficient!
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by Alli KennedyBenjamin House Ministries Summer 2019 Intern After her husband, Tom, passed away in April from complications with diabetes, Rose Hambungala was left as a widow with no source of income and seven children in her care. When the members of her Parents of Sponsored Children in Ntinda group learned that they had lost a dear member of their group and community, they began to think of ways they could help Rose and her family. Though they make little to nothing, they joined together to come up with 80,000 shillings, or $22, to provide for the Hambungala family. Instead of providing a temporary solution, like food, that would run out quickly, they inquired about investing in a business that Rose could begin and continually support her family with the profits. When Rose expressed an interest in selling charcoal, the parents decided they would cover the expenses of the materials she needed if she contributed to the cost of a shop. Charcoal is used by the majority of them Ugandans for fuel, cooking, and many daily needs. Rose’s daughter generously gave her mother some of her earnings from her job to pay for space for Rose to start her business. Rose found a shop in a strategic position on a busy road with a large amount of space that will allow her to grow and scale her business as she continues to work. She purchased two bags of charcoal and within one week of opening her shop, she has already begun to make a profit. Through all of the hardship Rose has gone through as a widow and mother, she continues to trust God to give her strength. “Even when I feel down, even when I cry sometimes because things are hard, I pray as I leave home each morning that I would surrender my life to God and let His will be done,” says Rose. I want to grow my business so that I can begin to help the other parents in their times of need, just as they have helped me. Rose is hopeful about her charcoal business and now has hopes for other businesses she would like to start in order to make enough money to provide for her entire family, such as selling fish and vegetables in front of her shop.
Susan is encouraged by their response and hopes that the parents will continue in their generosity. “Their mindset has now changed from ‘we’re helpless’ to ‘how can we help.’” by Alli KennedyBenjamin House Ministries Summer 2019 Intern Mary Nanyonga welcomes Susan (our Ntinda Child Advocate), Sharif (a volunteer and Ntinda sponsored child), and me from outside of her home and then hurriedly disappears behind a yellow curtain covered in floral print in the door frame to get something from inside. She reappears with something in her arms and motions for us to sit on the steps in front of her house as she spreads out a pink woven mat. Susan remarks on her youthful look and Mary's eyes light up as she laughs at the remark. Mary is small in stature, but I can tell she is strong from her build and the way she walks. As we talk with her about her two children who are in the Benjamin House sponsorship program and her husband’s poor health following a boda boda accident, I notice a mountain of plastic bottles that look as if they’re going to burst from a multitude of sacks gathered together next to her home. I quickly learn that these plastic bottles are Mary’s livelihood. She spends each day walking through trenches and along roadsides with three sacks on her back to fill, hoping to collect enough to sell for a profit. The nature of her work is cruel. People laugh at her like she is a mad person as they see her wandering around aimlessly looking for bottles. She’s lost respect from many people in her community because of her job. Her health is at risk each day as she digs through sewage and waste collecting plastic bottles in three sacks that she tries to fill each day. “I am constantly discouraged by their laughter, but I know God is with me because it’s a risky job and I never get sick,” Mary says. She gets up to show us the collection of bottles she’s obtained over the last few months. She used to collect bottles on a small scale and send them to a factory, but the people she would give them to would cheat her out of money by using weighing scales that weren’t fully functional to measure the amount she had collected, or by giving her less than what she had earned from the profits from the factory. She decided that she wanted to buy her own scale so she could maintain the integrity of her business and have an accurate way of weighing the bottles. Aside from a few times a week when her husband works as a boda boda driver for two hours at a time, Mary is the sole provider for her family. She smiles and tells us that the parents in her savings group, through the Benjamin House sponsorship program, lent her the money to get her scale, which she will pay back when she earns the profits from the plastic bottles that she has been collecting for three months. She will need 600 kg, or 1,322 pounds, of bottles, to earn around $135 from the plastic company. Until she reaches her goal, she will sell jerry cans and other large items she finds to provide for the every-day needs of her children. Benjamin House Ministries' sponsorship program is benefitting her entire family through education and various programs. Mary attends a savings program and parents' group while her children attend the spiritual development program. She tells us with tears in her eyes how happy she is that she can send her children to school. “My child said to me one day, ‘Mommy, why don’t you just stop buying food for me at home and use that money to help me go to school,’ and that broke my heart,” Mary says with a heavy sigh. She couldn’t have even taken her children to a cheap school. Sponsorship is the only option she has to provide education for her children. As I finish taking photos and talking to Mary, she looks at us with bright eyes, sacks filled with bottles over her shoulders, telling us she’s okay with whatever demands her job brings. Assuring us that she will find the number of bottles she needs, that she will someday expand to a bigger store where people will come and sell their bottles to her, and that she will have more room to contain the bottles she’s collected. Despite the ridicule and the risk of her work, she carries on with a joyful heart, striving to earn enough to give back to other parents in need, and thanking God for the courage to do her work each day. by Alli KennedyBenjamin House Ministries Summer 2019 Intern This is Winifred Nabwami. Winifred is an entrepreneur and single mother of four children, the youngest of which is Josephine Nalubega, sponsored through BHM. Since 1990 when Winifred had her first child, she has been making envelopes by hand to hold medicine ordered at local pharmacies in order to support her family. She buys scrap paper and then cuts sheets into the shape of the envelope. Because glue is very expensive, Winifred seals them with a mix of cassava flour and water which is then warmed over a fire to create paste. Each night, she goes from pharmacy to pharmacy, selling her envelopes in hopes that she will find a new partner to work with. She wants to distribute her envelopes to the pharmacies and become their exclusive and trusted vendor. Every day she worries whether or not she will sell enough to put food on the table because people do not buy her packages every day and the pharmacies have begun to replicate her design. Despite the challenges she faces, Winifred is thankful for her job because it allows her to stay at home with her family and prevents her from having to do jobs that would put her health at risk. Many women in the community have to pick up scraps and sweep the roads or other hard manual labor in which they can be easily exploited. Winifred is extremely thankful for her daughter’s sponsorship because it released her from the stress of her child’s school fees and introduced her to a savings program that has prevented her from being in a vulnerable position by asking people for loans. With the BHM savings program, which each parent of sponsored children can be enrolled in, she has started saving money for her daughter’s university fees and transportation. Her daughter hopes to be an accountant. Winifred Nabwami is excited to teach the other mothers in the sponsorship program how to make the envelopes and sell them so they can all provide for their families and save money together. A true act of humility and trusting that the Lord will provide for her family and the Ntinda community through the skills He has given her. |
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