Bishop Asili Hospital Dentist, Jane Mandera, pictured right with Puja Shah and Dental Beneficiaries

Dental care has always been something that I have taken for granted. My mother was adamant that we get our teeth cleaned and checked every six months, and we were lucky enough to always have the insurance to cover our dental care. At 35, I have never had a cavity or any other major problem with my teeth and am probably one of very few people who actually likes going to the dentist.

It’s a much different story for most people living in Uganda. As Jane Mandera, the dentist at the Bishop Caesar Asili Hospital told me, many people can’t afford dental care. She said her patients often shun her advice because they know they can’t afford basic treatment. Many say, “eh, just keep on removing the teeth,” which is much more affordable than receiving annual cleanings, fillings and restorative work.

Jane joined the staff at Bishop Asili in 2009 after completing her degree in public health and general dentistry at the Mulago Paramedical School. At that time, the hospital’s dental unit only had a hard wooden straight back chair for patients to sit in while Jane worked on their teeth and a wooden table for her meager equipment. In 2010 Jane met Vivian Glyck, Founder and Executive Director at Just Like My Child Foundation (JLMC). Accompanying Vivian was a pediatric dentist, Dr Puja Shah, who came to the hospital with her dental instruments and the intention of mentoring and helping Jane perform extractions and other dental work. However, Dr. Puja was unprepared for the poor condition of the hospital’s dental unit. Using the wooden chair and table she spent one week assisting Jane in the clinic. After her touching experience, Dr. Puja went back to the States with stories and photos to start raising money to upgrade the standard of the clinic.

 

Bishop Asili Dental Clinic Before .. and After

Dr. Puja and her colleague, Lidia Trainer, engaged their community and raised the funds to equip the dental unit with a proper dental chair and dental instruments so Jane can comfortably and effectively serve the needs of her patients.

Jane says, “Now with the chair and instruments I receive the greatest joy when clients come back for follow up care and I see that they are following the advice that I gave them.” She says she still faces many challenges. Material for dental fillings is very expensive. So the hospital often runs short of these materials. Jane says right now she doesn’t have any materials for restorative treatments, like fillings. The fillings cost a patient 20,000 Ugandan shillings, less than $10. The materials cost anywhere between $40 and $80 depending on the type of filling material. One package of material could last through 50 people needing fillings.

Jane always dreamed of being a dentist and delivering the best dental treatment. Relieving the clients of their pain and ensuring that they can have good dental hygiene is her ultimate goal. “Oral hygiene is really bad among my clients. I educate them how to maintain and take care of their teeth. I follow up with their care and see that they return for cleanings. They learn to take better care of their teeth,” says Jane. Before Dr. Puja,’s visit, Jane explained she was feeling discouraged working with so many inadequacies. “People needed so much, but we had so little; we couldn’t provide all the treatments. The visit with Dr. Puja, motivated me to reach out to the community and realize my dream again. They [JLMC and Dr. Puja] touched my life so much.”

She hopes in time the hospital will be able to afford a full dental unit. Currently, they do not have the resources to do dentures or crowns. She explains that people don’t like to be referred to Kampala for needed dental treatment. They feel discouraged because the transportation and stay in Kampala are additional expenses they cannot afford. “People come see me and they can’t even open their mouths the infection is so bad,” Jane says.

Contributions to the dental clinic are part of the Keep a Mother Alive program implemented by JLMC. A $100 contribution will help Jane and the Bishop Asili hospital purchase filling materials and other dental equipment for patients in dire need of dental work.

Gyriadda Girls Participate in a Girls Empowerment Workshop 2/12

One of those communities, St. Kizito, Gyriadda faced several struggles over the past two years, which initially had delayed the building of their school. A major challenge was the discovery of a defilement case right before their project was to begin. JLMC found out through its Girl Power Program that the nursery school teacher was sexually abusing his girl students, and had been for several years. When the community members learned of the abuse, they felt they had no recourse since corruption is so rampant within the local justice system and the teacher was so well known within the community.

Another struggle facing the community has been impoverishment. Because of the high poverty in the area, the community members struggled to gather local resources: sand, stones, and clay bricks required as a co-investment by JLMC to construct the school building. In cases like Gyriadda, JLMC must exercise patience and provide encouragement as communities together find solutions to issues that delay their progress. Community contributions are critical to deep development; it builds community ownership over a project, ensuring the community will maintain the project well into the future.

With the help of JLMC, the Gyriadda community has overcome many of their struggles one by one and has made great progress in 2011. Through JLMC’s Project Justice, a human rights workshop was held for community members to promote the rights of women and children and to prevent more cases of sexual abuse. As a result of the workshop, the community was successful in chasing the teacher involved in the defilement out of town with the help of local police.

As of November 2011, the construction of the school is back on track. The roof has just been added to the building, which will have three classrooms and an office for the principal. JLMC also contributed to the construction of a latrine for teachers and students.

Skilled Labourers Work to Add Roofing to St. Kizito, Gyriadda’s School Building 2/12

Teachers, school board members and PTA members received two professional development workshops to improve the learning environment of the school and to help increase student performance.

63 girls participated in three Girl Power workshops to increase their capacities for self-empowerment, leadership potential and social survival skills. When asked during the first Girl Power workshop of 2012, girls reported no cases of defilement since the sensitization campaign. A major success!

Yet, despite these magnificent accomplishments, the Gyriadda community, as well as the four other school communities sponsored by JLMC, still have many challenges to overcome. Many of the schools lack chairs and desks, critical for a conducive learning environment. Instructional materials are also limited in many of the schools.

Access to health care and health education is limited, and income generation activities in the schools to support extracurricular activities like drama and sports is nonexistent.

In 2012, JLMC has exciting plans for its Universal Education Program, which hopes to address the aforementioned challenges.

JLMC will

• Provide furniture and instructional resources to improve learning environments
• Provide the opportunity for schools to generate income  to give students lunch and opportunities for extracurricular activities
• Increase student and teacher’s ability to deal with relevant health issues in their communities
• Increase the capacity of school management committees to manage operations, solve community problems and supervise education through capacity building workshops.
• Increase the capacity of teachers to deliver well planned lessons
• Ensure that schools meet national standards as laid out by Department of Education

However, JLMC cannot reach its goals without your support. Here are ways you can help:

For only $1,000 you can  furnish an entire classroom, so that children are not seated on the floor during lessons.

For only $100 you can help fund a much needed professional development workshop for teachers and school boards.

For only $200 you can help fund dental hygiene outreach.

Donate today to further improve the lives of the thousands of children that JLMC serves through its Project Universal Education.

In Luwero district in rural Uganda, we are so excited that a new partnership with Heifer International will bring even more dignity and “wekembe” to our families. Over the next three years 740 families will receive goats and vegetable, bean and nut seeds and fruit seedlings for passion fruit, oranges and mangoes. We can already see those new trees blossoming along with this project!

The 740 families join 20 other families already benefiting from Just Like My Child’s Project Grace Initiative. Project Grace empowers rural Ugandans to create and sustain businesses.

The 740 families help support about 5000 men, women and children in this area of rural Uganda. They will be trained in animal husbandry, building and managing the animal pens, business building/savings, and other skills. As their businesses and animals grow, the families will proudly pass on more goats and business acumen to other families in Heifer’s “Pass on the Gift” model.

Anatolia will be one of our first Project Grace superstars to help other families succeed. When we first met Anatolia, all she wanted was the freedom to live out the rest of her days in peace. Now she has a bright future and enough money to pay for her children’s education. Anatolia has bred and sold two pigs – for a $30 profit. She’s wisely re-invested most of her profits into other pigs and pens to grow her business. She shows her children each day what empowerment looks like.

“My dream now: to build up my project to a level that I can provide for my family for generations to come,” Anatolia says. “I want to ensure that my children and grandchildren are happy and healthy and have the opportunities for a good education. I’d also like to repair my family home, so it’s suitable for my family far into the future. I am now confident that we will all have access to proper hygiene, health care and good nutrition.”

Now that’s what we call “Wekembe!”

Many in Jillian’s community in the Luwero district north of the capital of Kampala have long given up of the hope of any justice. They assume that the laws only exist to protect the wealthier in Kampala, where 95 percent of Ugandan attorneys live.

But Jillian’s wiser and more empowered. She knew about her rights because her community had participated in our game-changing, groundbreaking Project Justice program.

John Baptist provides training to guardians on creating a Will in Kikoiiro

Project Justice provides rural Ugandans with greater knowledge of and access to judicial information and processes to strengthen the legal safety net, especially for vulnerable women and children, like Jillian (not her real name). Now she is protected, no longer living at home and has escaped an early marriage- if not much worse.

In rural Uganda, most people remain ignorant of most criminal and civil laws and how to uphold them. Couples don’t even know if they are legally married. They view their children, as “property” yet does not know if they even legally own their land and homes. They lose hope and are vulnerable to crime, anarchy, and terrorism.

We demand and work for change. With the African organization FIDA, weaving in legal and medical personnel and community members, we’ve helped people protect themselves from crime, fraud, and abuse by investing in:

• Paralegal training of legal and medical personnel (more than 1,000 trained so far in 50 rural communities)
• Processes that allow people to immediately access counseling, medical and legal intervention, and report all crimes to the legal authorities
• Practices that allow the expedition of the collection of proper medical evidence, reporting, documentation, and legal prosecution according to Ugandan laws
• Personal training so people feel empowered, confident and secure in seeking legal help

It’s hard for us to imagine the legal and human atrocities that constitute daily reality in Africa. Yet they also represent an opportunity for widespread cultural change. Where rape is often not considered a crime or women are tossed out of their homes for not cooking well, we have to stop looking away. Where children are often viewed as property, or forced as young as 12 into prostitution—we have to act now.

The world won’t change and people won’t claim and exercise their rights if the legal system and widespread access to it doesn’t. Help us fuel this justice movement at Just Like My Child Foundation.

For centuries, Ugandan women and girls have been forced to meekly kneel before men. We are so proud of Nyiraguhabwa Monica, who is teaching our girls to stand proud and treat themselves with the greatest respect.

Monica is helping girls embrace life skills and empowered choices that will help them navigate the rest of their lives. Monica designs and leads our Girl Power workshops, which teach hundreds of young women that they have the right to live their lives without being harassed, exploited, or hurt. And that they can choose to attend school or work without persecution.

Monica’s work couldn’t be more urgent. Save the Children estimates that two children each hour are defiled in Uganda.

One of Just Like My Child’s students was raped and impregnated. The rapist’s family tried to “erase” the abuse by giving the child’s family a cow — and her family accepted it as the only kind of justice available to them.

Vivian Glyck knew in that moment that she had to launch a program that would strengthen, protect, and empower future girls, and convinced Monica to train hundreds of girls ages 9 to 13 via the Girl Power Project. Those girls now are becoming more confident and bold, knowing THEY may be Uganda’s next leaders.

We live for those days when the girls say things like, “I discovered ways of building my self esteem” or “I unlearned the mentality that men are stronger than women!”

Thank you Monica, for making the Girl Power Project a force with which to be reckoned! Monica will be joining us remotely from Uganda for our Hand Up, Never a Handout Celebration!

Join us October 13 for an unforgettable evening of hope, inspiration, education and FUN!!

The beads are selling upwards of 20+ dollars and range from bracelets to necklaces here on that busy coastal street.  Don’t get me wrong I do love those beads and I wear mine everyday. We here at Just Like My Child Foundation sell  (and sometimes raffle) them at our events to use for our program funding and I often give them as gifts but I would rather give the Ugandan women goats. I would rather give them a business they can grow and sell in their own back yard. This way she can depend on her own destiny and her own business prowess, rather than depending on people half a world a way to continue creating demand for inventory.

The beads will become a commodity here and with a lot of inventory the prices will have to plummet to get rid of the extra pieces, which just furthers poverty in Uganda as well as makes the women and young girls dependent on another’s supply chain. Our purchasing habits are at best fickle and the Ugandan ladies have no control over our buying power. This is why we have teamed up with Bishop Asili Hospital and created Project GRACE. Project GRACE is a microenterprise program that provides a small loan (poultry or livestock, and goats) with intensive training to help create a self-sustaining business that will support Ugandan families.

The beads are beautiful, unique, and not always easy to come by; however, neither are goats in Uganda. Take some time and read about Project GRACE and how we have created sustainable businesses and practices for rural Ugandan families.  You can also send a goat to a family in Uganda, check out how here.  Also, please share with us your thoughts on the subject.

You know how every time you go to a conference; you’re given a mass-produced tote bag with the logo of the sponsoring organization?

Well, this year, Traffic Geyser, Inc. did something a little different — and it created a BIG change. Exhibiting it’s commitment to global consciousness, Traffic Geyser purchased conference bags for its Social Media Marketing Machines event from women at the Asili Hospital in Uganda who are on AIDS treatment and ready to come back to life!

Each bag is handmade, and through this income-generating project women are sending their children to school and supporting their families. Each bag represents a woman whose heavy load has been lifted just a little bit by being given the opportunity to create her own solutions.

But Traffic Geyser didn’t stop there! The Social Media Marketing Machines event and Main Street Marketing Machines events were held this past Spring and helped raise enough money for the Just Like My Child Foundation to purchase a desperately-needed new vehicle for Asili Hospital in Uganda, invest in small businesses for over 500 families recovering from AIDS, and helped to fund badly-needed medical equipment!

Entrepreneurs on this side of the world helping entrepreneurs on the other side of the world to be self-sustaining are one of the fastest ways to alleviate poverty. So thank you, Traffic Geyser!

For more information please contact us by clicking here or just donate here.

My husband, an entrepreneur, was so blown away by how we’re helping to create thousands of entrepreneurs on the other side of the world, that he created this video:

And he’s helped us to raise thousands of dollars to give people the hope, dignity, and freedom of economic independence. You can too by clicking here, just a little goes a long way in Uganda.

Here is a surprising answer to the question of what costs Africa $12 billion a year in economic loss. Malaria.  Every 45 seconds a child in Africa dies from malaria.

In the U.S. we might think that malaria is similar to many other diseases – it is preventable and treatable.  So why does it contribute to so many deaths and costs Africa billions of dollars?  Because Just Like My Child has been working in Uganda for four years now we are painfully and sometimes personally aware of the affects of malaria and we assume everyone knows what we know.

I was recently asked the question of why Africa has one of the highest rates of  malaria-related deaths.  Why there and not here?  What makes the U.S. and other nations less susceptible?  That is when I realized sometimes I take for granted the education I have received through my work in Uganda.  Those “simple” questions spurred the content for this blog post.

Malaria is typically found in warmer regions of the world such as tropical countries with consistently higher temperatures.    Therefore many areas in sub-Saharan Africa are ideal climates for malaria-carrying mosquitos.  So you might think that tropical parts of the U.S. would have the same problems.  The fact is that states like Florida did suffer from high rates of malaria. However, the U.S. Government made a concerted effort to eliminate malaria through spraying of DDT in the 1950s. Environmentalists argued against DDT, but no one can argue against saving the lives of millions of children. Many experts would agree that malaria could be drastically reduced in sub-Saharan Africa through focused political will and financial commitment on the part of indigenous and international governments.  Visit http://www.3billionandcounting.com/ for a controversial yet thought-provoking discussion on this topic.

Another reason why Africa suffers more than most areas from malaria is a result of its vicious cycle of poverty.  If you start with an impoverished developing country and add a deadly disease that is easily transmittable from insect to human with medical aid miles away, you are destined to see a struggle not likely found in other countries.

Malaria is a drain on the already impoverished communities of Africa.  The more often a family suffers from malaria the more a parent has to choose taking care of the child over working.  The less money they make, the fewer the opportunity to get access to preventive medicine and education in very rural areas.

The largest population of children in Uganda and many adults cannot wait for new treatments to be distributed.  In many cases, the drugs will not find their way to the most rural areas without additional resources for doing so.

At Just Like My Child we are constantly improving the means and methods for reaching the children most susceptible to severe malaria illness and death.  Our reach is expanding and through improved education about prevention and distribution for protective nets we are making progress.

These proven protective nets are an inexpensive way to protect a child, improve a family and provide opportunities for a community.  A $100 donation will help 30 individuals to a change the course of a cycle of poverty to one of self-reliance.

Please donate today at:  https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=26195&Itemid=108

When we first met Anatolia she said that all she wanted was the freedom to live out the rest of her days in peace, raise her children and her animals in order to secure a bright future for her whole family. She has done just that and now will have enough money to pay for her children’s education. Like so many mothers, Anatolia wants the best for her children and for them to want for nothing. Anatolia is taking action to break the cycle of poverty and showing her children (and grandchildren) what empowerment looks and feels like.

In my previous blog, Project GRACE: Micro-enterprising to Achieve Self Reliance in Uganda, I shared a video and details about how our program is providing families like Anatolia’s with the tools to create, manage and profit from their own business. For thousands of these families the physical effects of HIV/AIDS and/or the stigma associated with it prevents the adults from being able to support their families.

Through Just Like My Child Foundation’s work with Bishop Asili Hospital, mothers and fathers are provided with the necessary treatment, and Project GRACE empowers them to become self-reliant: through micro-enterprise. Through a loan of poultry of livestock along with training, these impoverished families can create a self-sustaining business that gives them hope and pride.

Project GRACE is giving HIV families a second chance and a step up not a hand out. It brings me great joy to share Anatolia’s heartwarming success story that your funds to Project GRACE have made possible.

Thank you to those of you who continue to support our efforts with your donations.

$300 provides an entire family of 6 with a complete sustainable business. Invest TODAY in Just Like My Child and help us empower communities to achieve self-sustenance and break the cycle of poverty.