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It was really funny for me to read Brian’s blog yesterday – I hadn’t realised he’d hoped I’d “go away” when we first met! As you can imagine, I was (very!) persistent, though, and it’s wonderful to know that he’s gone from being our biggest critic to one of our greatest supporters over the past six months.
CiF Team
Building a ‘Home’ isn’t in line with today’s modern thinking on social or child welfare, but as I’ve said on numerous occasions, we are not building an orphanage – ours will be a place of safety and care that ultimately aims to place children back into families. I think it has really helped that Brian is out here now, witnessing first-hand the need for the Foundation. After 4 years of me talking (and talking, and talking) about it, he – and all our supporters – can really see for themselves just how much we can do to create change here.
Meanwhile, our plan is really beginning to take shape and I’m so excited that, as well as building a centre that will provide the best possible care and set up a social work department to find families for every one of our children, we are now also committing to tackle the root cause of abandonment. We’ll be working with the mothers to try and support them, so they don’t feel that abandoning their baby is their only course of action.
Today, we visited Waakisa Ministries, who provide care for pregnant teenage girls. The project really gave me hope – they have set up in just two years, and we could see that it’s very well run and making such a huge difference. I think when you come across projects that truly work, it’s very good to learn from them, so I would really like to keep in touch with Damilie and her team to share our experiences – and get as much of their advice as we can!
Tomorrow is a big day for us, as we are visiting Mulago hospital. 64 babies are abandoned there every year and we hope to work with Mulago and Home Start International in the future – so wish us luck!
It’s day three, and today we donned our smartest clothes to see the British High Commissioner, Martin Shearman.
Meeting the British High Commissioner
In a really positive meeting, he congratulated us on what he described as our “culturally sensitive” approach of talking to the locals and people in the know about what we want to achieve in Uganda. A common problem here is organisations just transplanting western ideas, rather than listening to what the local people really need. And we would be making a mistake if we simply replicated another charity’s model – ultimately our aim is to set up a project that no one else is doing and is really going to make a difference to the lives of abandoned babies. I’m immensely proud of our team – we have achieved so much in a short space of time. My wingman, Brian, continues to ask exactly the right questions, and his contacts have managed to set up meetings with the great and the good here. His dedication and passion for this project never ceases to amaze me – I have utmost respect for his opinion, and we would not be where we are now without his invaluable advice. And our Saff has pulled off a miracle – after producing weekly video updates on Bebo’s The Gap Year she promised never to attempt to upload a video in Africa ever again (the slowness and unreliability of the connection make it one of the most time-consuming jobs ever) but now she is doing it every day! Last night was a real test of her patience – after waiting 3 hours to upload a video, she discovered it hadn’t worked and had to start all again. Ouch! But it’s up now, and we really hope you enjoy the videos. We feel they give a great insight into what we are trying to do, so all those hours Saff spends watching a timeline is worth it. We would love to know what you think of our videos and welcome any suggestions.
Counting down the minutes
Tomorrow we are giving ourselves a much-needed day off. Brian is a fishing fanatic and has been looking forward to a spot of angling on the Nile all week, while I can’t wait to spend some time with the kids at Sanyu. See you on Sunday, folks, and please do keep those questions coming.
Show us your support and become a fan on Facebook – http://www.childsifoundation.org/go/facebook/planning
Tomorrow we are leaving for Uganda for 21 days. I am as excited as I am nervous.
Check out our team t-shirts
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Here is an overview of the first week of our trip:
Please keep in touch x
Hi there I’m Saffron and I shall be heading out to Uganda in a few days with Lucy and Brian to film the planning trip. As Producer / Director I have worked on a variety of entertainment programmes for BBC and Channel 4. Recently I was a P/D on “The Gap Year” for Bebo, an interactive online travel adventure following 6 travellers all round the world on the highs and lows of a 6 month Gap Year.
Saffron - our Producer
Africa and I have a bit of a history, like Brian the continent never let go with me either. I first landed there back in ‘98 when I went on an overland trip through Uganda and Kenya in my university summer holiday. Since then I have been back several times and on Gap Year I travelled for 6 months filming through various parts of South, East, North and West Africa. I am really chuffed to be using my skills to help this amazing project get off the ground.
In our three weeks in Uganda we really want to feel like you are there with us through the entire trip right from the moment we arrive in Uganda. This is going to be an important trip and we want YOU to be involved.
So for now it’s on to finalising our shooting schedule, checking through the kit, praying the internet in Uganda is up to it and packing the well travelled rucksack once more!
7 days to go!
In 14 days time, we are going out to Uganda for 3 weeks to conduct a planning trip.
Our aim is to build a centre of excellence to provide life saving care to abandoned babies and return children to their own families or to foster or adoptive families. This trip is going to determine just how we are going to deliver our promise.
We are taking Brian Waller, our most capable social work adviser who is now working with us to develop our social care approach. He has worked in Uganda and has years of experience in working with families and young children.
21 days is not a lot of time especially as we need to find the answers to some fundamental questions including:
Why are babies being abandoned?
More to the point why do mothers abandon their babies? Is there anyway we could help prevent mothers abandoning their babies in the first place? Tackle the root cause of abandonment and work with mothers to prevent abandonment and ultimately be the people they turn to instead of abandoning their newborn baby in a derelict building?
William from the Sanyu Babies' Home
What?
We now need to decide exactly what extra services we are going to provide beyond the immediate care of newly abandoned babies. Should we, for example, design our centre to accommodate mothers too on a daily or residential basis? We need to talk to government, existing projects and, if possible, mothers themselves about our plans and see where the gaps in provisions are in childcare.
Where?
Location is key. Our project must be firmly based in a local community. It has to be genuinely supported by the local people and local agencies and feel “African” and not something transplanted from outside the continent. If we cannot achieve that ‘buy in” from the very beginning our project will never be sustainable.
How?
We want to find foster or adoptive homes for abandoned children but this is not so common an idea as it is here. It would be easier to look after them long term in an institution but we don’t believe being another orphan statistic is best for the child. Our challenge is to find existing and reliable charities who do this and family support work well and who could work in partnership with us.
And there’s more…
Every day we want to upload a daily video and blog to keep supporters updated on the progress of our project but we need to see if this works on a practical level. We are lucky enough to take out Saffron Jackson, Producer of The Gap Year who has travelled around Africa and is an expert at filming, shooting and uploading videos so if anyone can do it Saffron can but it will be an interesting exercise to see if the idea in theory works in reality. We’ll find out soon enough…
What you can do…
We need your input as this is your charity and we want you to get involved. We want to have a conversation with you so please send us your questions, add your comments, send us ideas, give us advice and support and help us create a centre which we can all be proud of.
Comic Relief last night raised a record £57 million for good causes in Africa and Britain. This was an incredible £17 million more than their previous record. It just goes to show that even in a severe economic crisis people still want to give. Most importantly people want to get involved and show support by taking part in their own fundraising initiatives.
Collaboration and enjoyment are the driving forces behind the success of Comic Relief. Child’s i Foundation can only dream and aspire to such success and brand recognition, but our philosophy is similar – we believe in individual contribution (give what you can in measurements of time, money or love) and together, as a community, we will achieve our goals.
This belief system runs through everything we do: step forward the “Together to Uganda” Team:
I’m Katee Hui and I am the Programme Manger for the Together to Uganda team.
Together to Uganda Team
I have the privilege of working with a small, dedicated team of young people from Beacon Community College who have great ideas and a tremendous amount of enthusiasm. My team members are:
- Hannah Jones: Communications officer
- Matt Burton: Technology Strategist
- Sophie Phillips: Operations co-ordinator
- Tom Lawson: Marketing and advertising officer
- Alex Colville: Public outreach officer
- Chris Chater: Design officer
- Natalie Phillips (Deputy Programe Manager): Community and University Outreach
Our first campaign, Together to Uganda is all about mobilising people to collaborate and cumulatively travel the distance to Uganda through various means.
- The distance is 4012 miles or 6457km
- The idea is for various contributors to collaborate and cover this distance by a combination of different modes of transport. From skiing to sailing, running to skipping, between groups of people
I will be co-ordinating the team and its activities. My job is to help run the campaign, from the marketing and advertising side to the technological requirements and logistics. Currently, we’re working on the our strategy, target lists and timeline. Each team member has their own role too – to cover all of the bases so we can run a successful campaign.
p.s. Check out this T-shirt from Howies. We love it because it just about sums up our campaign. If you fancy having a go at designing something specifically for Together to Uganda along the same lines please get in touch.
Together to Uganda - Individual vs. Group effort
What a day. Yesterday properly shifted into gear with Clay Shirky’s lunchtime talk at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts).
The talk was one of the ICA’s “Feedback” season events and as part of their investigation into the effects of networked and social media, they actively encourage the use of recording equipment during talks. So, rather than summarise Shirky’s talk we have uploaded two snippets recorded on the Flip (see our YouTube Channel).
We were dying to ask Shirky, in this changing world, how non-profits and charities could exploit the tools available to us. The microphone didn’t get to us but Lucy did catch up with him as he left the lecture theatre. He showed interest in our charity model and then mentioned his current writing about generosity within community. This will surely change third sector thinking or at least accelerate the change that has started to happen. We hold our breath in anticipation.
Clay Shirky talking at the ICA Feedback session in London
Our inaugural Child’s i Foundation meetup the Old Bank of England last night was testament to Shirky’s thinking that social tools – the internet, mobile phones, applications built on top of those “have provided an antidote to the hassle factor when you try to get a group of people to do something”. We used meetup.com to invite a group of “social innovators and supporters” to join us, to present our plans and ideas to them face-to-face and to ask for their feedback and involvement.
Link to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKXqB9pD-gQ
The evening was just so enjoyable. A group of 40 interesting and varied people offered us their time, helped us understand how to recruit and organise better, they committed to sporting and community fundraising events, offered us their expert technical expertise, architectural skills and marketing ideas. It didn’t even end at pub closing time. Several meetup community members have written to us today with ideas and incredible offers such as donating percentage profits from their new business to the charity and expert social work advice.
Talking, listening, collaborating, interacting at meetup
People travelled into London from other parts of the country for this event, people who didn’t previously know us personally but have connected with us online and understand our cause.
We are truly grateful to be able to collaborate and receive direct feedback from our community and look forward together to making this a really enjoyable venture to be part of.
The slideshow presentation from the evening is here on SlideShare.com
Our first ever meetup
One of our supporters Hannah Jones asked us the other day:
“What does the ‘i’ stand for in Child’s i Foundation?”
The ‘i’ stands for ‘interactive’. We want supporters to interact with the charity, talk to us, read our blog posts, watch the videos, join our networks etc.
But ‘i’ also stands for individual contribution. It is all about giving what you can.
So many of you have already given your time, love or money and we are so grateful. We would love you to show your friends and family that you have made a difference, that you have helped towards building a babies’ home in Uganda.
So, wear one of these super-cute little badges with pride.
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