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.

A LONG overdue update (from Dan and Meghann)

Here is what has been happening:

Christmas in Kibera:

Meghann: The holidays were amazing, thanks to everyone's donations and holidays gifts that helped us get through it all. In anticipation of the holidays, we gathered all of the items that have been donated such as books, toys, shoes, school supplies, and sports equipment, grouped them into age groups and brought them along with us on our home visits. On Christmas day and the few days after, we visted our HIV+ patients most in need and delivered donations from clothing to school supplies to full meals for their families.

As all the orphans and HIV+ families in our program are part of the Uweza family, it was great to see them and deliver all of your donations on Christmas, and it was great to see and hear all of the thanks and gratitude we received from everyone. We at Uweza cannot even begin to thank our supporters back at home for actually making it happen.

Dan: Meghann and I visited patients in their houses [home visits] to bring them some Christmas gifts which had been donated plus some money from the selling of their beadwork, they were very happy to receive it since most of them had nothing for Christmas. The money we gave will help them provide for themselves; they really appreciated the help they received. Though some of the patients looked sickly, they did manage a smile,which was nice.

Soccer:

Meghann: The boys have been practicing only occasionally due to the holidays but are now getting back to working hard and competing in local competitions. A volunteer has organized a drive for soccer equipment in the U.S. The equipment will be brought over in February and will be distributed to the teams and we're excited about that because many of them need new shoes and some of the balls have holes due to the rough condition of their playing fields.

Sponsorship Program:

Meghann: Shortly after the holiday season brought on the first day of the new school year, meaning over 25 children in our sponsorship program re-entering school, joining school for the first time, or interviewing for a spot in a new school. The first few weeks of January were very busy and stressful for these reasons as all the school fees were due, uniforms had to be bought, and interviews were scheduled. After everything was settled, 9 of our sponsored children started attending Olympic Primary School, one of the best public schools in Kenya, and over 15 others returned to school with new uniforms, supplies, and their school fees paid.

Also, for those who sponsor a child, your sponsorship updates for January are in the process of completion as we speak! Thank you all for the patience as we have really struggled to follow the deadlines. As the sponsorship program is fairly new with over 25 kids to care for and it has been difficult getting everything together in a timely manner.

Dan: The kids were very happy to get a chance of joining good schools. But due to the current country-wide teacher strikes at government schools, all the children have adjourned going to school because there is little or no attention taken by the teachers who are demanding for the salary increase. This strike has badly affected smooth learning but hope soon all will be ok and the teachers will resume.

Jamii:

Meghann: Jamii Children's Center has reopened school, and now includes 2 classes. Prior to the post-election violence there were 3 classes, but after most of the students moved and the school struggled to find teachers, the number of students lessened. They have started the new term with new teachers and some new students and we hope that the school will continue to improve to the state that it was in prior to the violence

Tumaini:

Dan: All of the support group members are doing good and have resumed meeting though not all because most of them traveled to upcountry to celebrate the Christmas season with their family and aren't yet back but hope they will report back soon. We received bead money and distributed to these ladies whose stuff were sold and were thankful of it all. The money assisted them pay a bit of school fees for their kids and others bought food for their family. Thanks to you all who made it possible.

This year they will arrange themselves into small groups of like five then work for better results to make each one among them involved to doing stuff rather than on an individual basis; it was decided when they met for the first time this year, opening day, which is really encouraging.

As it was reported late last year, Tumaini is doing chicken rearing which is to assist in providing eggs to the patients during home visits and the kids in the orphanage. I found some chickens but they were not of good health so I decided to wait to buy good quality and healthy ones which is to be due soon. The coop is done and ready to accommodate 50 chickens. It was agreed after considering how big the demand for eggs is in the outreach program and even for the kids in the orphanage.

Tunza:

Meghann: At Tunza Children's Center all the kids are back in school doing well, and we are working together with a volunteer now on creating a better administration with a Board of Directors to make the decisions and better deal with the inflow of resources to the Center.

General news:

Meghann: For now, as we near the end of January, things at Uweza have calmed down to a more normal pace. Jen is back in the US and I will be out of Nairobi doing some HIV/AIDS research on the coast for the next few weeks, so expect us to just be maintaining our projects. We hope by the end of February, after a much needed break, to start building our projects once more. We are working out proposals for our internet training cafe and facilities, as well as continuing to plan for UWEZA Academy, a pre-primary school for needy children we hope to complete for enrollment in January 2010.

Uweza Holiday Gifts!

Looking for a last-minute, easy-to-purchase, unique holiday gift idea? Give a gift that helps individuals and families living in poverty in Kenya.

We have put together a Holiday Gift Catalog so that donations to Uweza can be given as gifts for the holidays.

Examples include sponsoring a child to play soccer, providing a holiday dinner for a family in Kibera or purchasing chickens for our health program. Gifts start as low as $5 and 100% of your donation will go toward purchasing services and supplies in Kenya. Gift money will not be used for administrative costs.

See the entire catalog HERE.

Ways gifts can be purchased:

1. By check sent to our PO Box: Uweza Aid Foundation, PO Box 1042, Evanston, IL 60204. Please note your gift choice on the check.*
2. Through Paypal. PayPal will prompt you to describe the purpose of your donation. This is where gift choices can be specified.


You can also send a quick email (to info@uweza.org) specifying your gift choice once you've donated.

Once donations are received, we will send you an email with Uweza holiday cards that can be printed and personalized to let gift recipients know how they've helped in Kenya.

*Note: If you donate by check to our PO Box, please send us an email to let us know so that we can email you the cards in time for the holidays.

Please contact us at info@uweza.org with any questions about our holiday gifts and Happy Holidays from Uweza!

Like the Giants or the Steelers or know someone who does?

Faces of Kibera (www.facesofkibera.org) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping orphans in Kibera. Their goal is to create and support a community-based facility outside of Kibera to provide care, education and services to these children. Funds raised by the organization will be spent on housing, as well as nutritional, educational, psychological and medical care, including anti-retroviral treatment for children who are HIV positive.

We have mentioned Faces of Kibera before in our blog and we work together with them on many of our projects.

The organization is auctioning off a LOT of great Giants and Steelers memorabilia and experiences on eBay today (December 8) through Saturday, December 13. 100% of the proceeds from the auctions will go directly toward building a new facility and providing care for orphaned children in Kibera.

The auction is here: http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/teacup86.

Uweza updates coming soon!

Jen

Thank You!

We put together a video to try and show you some of the things that we have accomplished so far this year and to give you a better sense of how donations are used. We are so grateful for your support and hope we've represented you well through our work in Kenya!

Jen

Eyesight, salaries, computers, and chickens

I received an e-mail from Meghann a few days ago with news about what they're up to in Kenya and thought I'd pass it along to any and all blog readers. They've been keeping busy and are getting a lot done!

Cyrus is doing a lot better. He is still going to the eye clinic where they have been continuing to monitor his progress and give him medicine to help reduce the swelling in his eyes. This week, he was able to get around the center by himself and even walk around in Kibera outside of the center with one of the other Tunza boys. He can't see perfectly but had definitely made a lot of progress and we are so happy that he will not end up permanently blind. We'll be continuing to monitor the situation and look into possible alternative education opportunities if his vision is not well enough to return to his normal school.

Recently, Tunza Children's Center has really been struggling to afford food and teacher's salaries. The teacher's had not been paid for months and have been teaching on a volunteer basis only. Last week, we were able to pay all of the teachers and staff salaries for one month and hope to pay them for another month next week. We also purchased beans and ugali for the center and a truckload of firewood. We received some very generous donations to help us out in supporting Tunza so thank you to those donors!

We are also getting ready to enroll the six sponsored kids from Tunza to enter classes 2, 4, 5, 6, and 7 at Olympic Primary School for entrance in January. The kids that will be going are some of the top students in their class at Tunza and we're excited for them to have this opportunity.

Meghann and Dan are working on setting up an office/computer center in Kibera, as Meghann mentioned in her last blog, and they may have a way to get some computers for free. It will be a great opportunity to be able to help children in Kibera become proficient in the use of computers and we're hoping this will work out!

The chicken coop is almost finished and by next week, Uweza will have 50 chickens and many, many eggs to supplement the diets of patients in our Tumaini Health program.

There are some other projects in the works, including the implementation of solar power at some of the centers and schools we support to reduce costs and the negotiation and purchase of land for our new school but details have not yet been worked out so maybe next time we'll have more info.

Thanks for reading and for your continued support of Uweza. We are accomplishing a lot more than we imagined we would be able to when we started the organization earlier this year and it is due to the support we have received, we truly appreciate it!!

Jen