Handbag and Jewelry Sale!

Where: Vincentown United Methodist Church, 97 Main Street, Southampton, New Jersey
When: Saturday August 1, 2009 from 9 am to 12 pm


All the proceeds will provide financial compensation, medicine, hospital care and income opportunities for HIV positive men and women in Kibera.

See the flyer for the event here.

If you are not able to attend but would like to hold a support group sale event in your town, please contact us!

Report from Counselors

The counselors that we have hired to work with the kids at Tunza have written a report for us about what type of issues they have been working on, the progress they have made with the kids and what still needs to be done.

See the full report here.

Uweza on Twitter

Uweza has hopped on the bandwagon and joined Twitter.

Follow us here: www.twitter.com/uwezakenya.

Support groups

The HIV-positive support groups that we support have been busy making bags and beaded jewelry. We have been helping the groups purchase the materials and thanks to the help of volunteers who have generously carried the products in their luggage, we have been selling the goods here. The majority of the proceeds from the sales go directly to the women who make the items, with the rest going into a fund provides hospital care and medicine for support group patients in need.



They have expressed a tremendous amount of gratitude to our supporters who have purchased the goods - the profits have helped them pay school fees for their children, pay their rents and purchase food. We also hope to use some of the funds to provide the groups with materials such as sewing machines or cleaning supplies so that they can start their own small businesses. More pictures of the group as well as their goods have been posted in the Tumaini section of the photo gallery. Please contact us if you are interested in purchasing or selling any of these items!

New Uweza Girls Team!

Two weeks ago, our new Uweza Girls Teams held their first practice! We have been introduced to a very talented female soccer player who has coaching experience and expressed interest in coaching a girls team. As of now, the two teams consists of girls from Tunza Children's Center. The girls are really excited about playing and had so much fun at their first few practices. Once we solidify a roster, we will work on getting them shoes, socks, uniforms and supplies like we did for our boys teams. More pictures of the girls at their practice have been posted in the photo section!

Boys Soccer

We now have five boys teams practicing regularly at a field that we have rented for Uweza teams only on Fridays and Saturdays and four coaches. The teams have been participating in a lot more tournaments and matches. Last weekend, the Tunza Under-12 team earned their first victory, beating out their opponents 1-0 and ending up fourth in the tournament! The Tunza Under-16 team is also currently participating in a tournament.

Changes for Tunza?

Right now is a pretty exciting time at Tunza. A volunteer named Mark, who is from Australia, visited Kibera and Tunza last month and took notice of its need for more structure and organization as well as regular funding. He is currently taking great efforts to set up and maintain a board of directors that will run the center. The board, which includes Dan - who is representing Uweza - has been meeting every week to discuss issues at the center and how donor funds should be spent. Mark is also working on bringing all former and current donors together to pool funds so that Tunza will have a more steady source of income.

He has a lot of great ideas for the center and we are currently carrying out discussions with the board of directors, Faces of Kibera and Mark to figure out the best way forward. This will be really great for the center as it has been living month-to-month for some time now and the added structure will greatly benefit the center and all of the kids. He's working on a website and we will be keeping everyone updated!

Letters

We received several letters from students that we sponsor and they are super cute so we wanted to share some of them. These three are from students that we sponsor through our collective sponsorship fund but who do not yet have an individual sponsor.

Alice, age 13
Duncan, age 14
Oscar, age 13

Coach's Update

Here is an update from one of our soccer coaches:

We had two friendly matches on Tuesday this week, one for our Under-10 team playing against the Under-12 Excel Academy team but we lost 3 - 1. Second was our Under-14 team playing against the Under-14 Excel Academy team but we also lost 3-0. The boys really tried and they enjoyed it despite their loss. Its hard for our boys to start winning the matches because they are actually playing against teams that normally train every day and somehow they are a bit older than them. But all in all we will keep on with the same spirit.

Jenny

Over the summer, we wrote about a girl named Jenny, who we met while visiting one of our HIV positive patients at the hospital. Jenny is 15, is HIV positive and has AIDS. When we met her, she was extremely skinny and sick and very weak. After she returned home from the hospital, we visited her at home a few times and she asked us if we could help her go back to school. She had finished primary school over a year ago but then she became sick and her grandmother, who is taking care of her, could not afford the fees for secondary school on top of the costs of her treatment. This didn't seem very realistic at the time, as she could barely walk or even sit up but we told her that we would try.

Last month, Dan and Meghann went to visit Jenny and were amazed at her progress! She has gained weight and is healthy and looks great. We decided to stick to our word and sponsor her to attend high school. Today, Dan brought her to get a new uniform and to pay her school fees and tomorrow, she will return to school for the first time since early last year.