Interviews to appoint House Parents

On the 25th June there are to be interviews to appoint men and women to be responsible for day-to-day care of the street children when they move into the Hostel. We might call such people "house parents"; the usual term used in Kasese as "patron and matron".
The interviews will be conducted not only by members of the SKILL Hostel Executive Board but also by representatives of the Education department and the Probation department of Kasese Municipality. This is not only to benefit from their expertise and experience, but to involve the municipal authorities in the life and work of the Centre.
I asked Enos Kyibibi about making necessary rule to be kept by the children - I was thinking about such things as "No alcohol on site" and "No taking of drugs". The Executive Board have discussed this, and feel strongly that rules must be made in discussion with the children themselves; if they can agree on what are fair and reasonable rules, they are much more likely to encourage each other to keep the rules.
Initially the boys will come out to the Centre on Saturdays, for various training activities, including health education. Enos has been able to borrow some tools for the children to use, as it will be some months before TWAM ("Tools With A Mission") are able to ship refurbished tools out from UK.

Progress - Building and Working Plan

Hostel building: Rev. Ian Elliott, retired vicar living in our village, has been out in several African countries working with CMS; he was able to spend 24 hours in Kasese, and visited the SKILL Hostel, bringing back some photos of progress.

Interior plastering and cementing of floors is going well; cladding is being added to the exterior wall in the veranda; and the water tower now has a tank on top.





















 












Working Plan: Enos Kyibibi, Project Director, has been working on the two Working Plans which will be needed for seeking ongoing funding - the Strategic Plan (giving the five-year vision for the Hostel Project) and the Operational Plan (laying out detailed facts, figures and budgets).
Here are samples of what he has included:  

10 double deck bunks ,bed sheets, blankets, mosquito nets, plastic chairs, dining table and towels.

Breakfast, lunch, diner, supper for 20 kids 

Tools for Carpentry, Tailoring, Knitting, Salon, Soap making,, Carving, Brick laying and concrete practice for 20 children for the first year 

chriscjenkin@aol.com or chriscjenkin@btinternet.com

Search for Funding

Here is Karago, one of the Street Children, speaking at the Hostel opening on March 24th. He spoke in Lhukonzo, so I did not understand a word, but he had the audience laughing frequently. I learned afterwards that his basic message was "We are human, too! We have gifts; we can make a contribution. My gift is music; but my friends have other gifts. Kasim is an acrobat!" And he called Kasim out to demonstrate!

 

 Funding: What is crucial for the viability of the Hostel is ongoing funding. And that is over to Enos and his Executive Board. Mary and I have always made clear that we undertook to raise funds for building the Hostel; but the future work depends on what the local community can do. 

The first port of call is the Mayor of Kasese, Kabbyanga Godfrey; when Enos and Mary went to see him in March, he told Enos to produce a Working Plan so that he and the Council could consider funding.

Enos said he would do this, and told us he would send us a draft for comments. He has send us his first draft, and we consulted local people about this - including a Professor who is an experienced lecturer on management issues. He explained that there are two kinds of Working Plan - a Strategic Plan, which is seeking to answer the question "What is this organization seeking to achieve?", and an Operational Plan, which aims to show facts, figures and budgets for the month by month activities.

Enos Kyibibi's draft fitted the Strategic Plan model, with one or two suggested tweaks. But I urged him also to get together with his Management Board to produce an Operational Plan - any potential funding body (Rotary International, UNICEF, TEAR Fund, Save The Children, as well as Kasese Town Council) will need such information. 

I spoke on the phone last night to Emmanuel Maate, the Chairman of the Board (who was our host in Kasese in March), who is going to get together with Enos, hopefully over this weekend, to discuss all the issues of funding and management.

Furnishing and Equipping the Hostel: once we are assured that ongoing finance is in place, we might be able to help with paying for furnishing the building and other "start-up" costs. Generous donors are still contributing towards this, and we are very grateful.

chriscjenkin@aol.com

Progress at the Hostel

Plaster and Floors
We have heard from Enos Kyibibi, the SKILL Hostel Director, that all the walls are already plastered now, and the flooring is complete.
Cladding is still going on; it is hoped that it will be complete by the end of this month.
It was the illness and death of Enos' father that delayed things, while Enos was at the Hospital taking care of his Dad, so that he could not be supervising the building work. Hopefully this work will restart on Monday.

Working Plan
When we were in Kasese in March, Mary and Enos spoke to the Mayor of Kasese (I was poorly so couldn't go), who indicated that it was possible that local authority funding for the Hostel might be available, but he needed to see a proper Working Plan. Drafting such a Plan is in progress at present - a draft has been sent to UK for our comments and suggestions, and we are consulting various people with expertise in such documents.

Saturdays are Centre Days
Until funding is available for running the SKILL Centre full time, the intention is to open it to the Street Children on Saturdays, for such things as:-

• Health Education - instructing the boys how to avoid HIV/AIDS, malaria and cholera (which has become a problem locally). Also training in First Aid.
• Maintenance - cleaning the compound, teaching them how to share labour.

chriscjenkin@aol.com 

A sad bereavement

Since we returned from Uganda we heard that Enos Kyibibi, the Skill Project Director, has suffered the loss of his father, Mzee Ephraim, who was 96. We met him briefly on our recent visit, and prayed with him as we learned that he was poorly.
The picture shows Enos with his wife and two children, and his elderly father on the left (and me in the middle!)
Here is another clip of the Hostel opening day, 24th March - showing Mary with a bunch of the street boys around her.

chriscjenkin@aol.com  

Another video!

First an apology - I am having trouble editing my posts and writing new ones - when going to the Blog via AOL, as I always have in the past, and then trying to sign in, I now get an "ERROR" message. It was suggested that I use Firefox instead, which I am now doing - but their posting screen is quite different, and I have struggled!
However I have tried to write a new post, with a Link to a YouTube video:
http://youtu.be/n7vgkDYKCVo
This - I hope - will show you a choir arriving at the Hostel Opening on March 24th, singing in their truck as it drove up.

Video Clips of Hostel Opening

http://youtu.be/cpjlwN096BE
This shows one of the school choirs which sang at the Opening.
The next clip shows me speaking to Ashiraf, the boy who in 2008 had spoken to us about the life on the streets, and why they were there - words which had touched our hearts and led to the entire project being started.
When we arrived at the Opening, Enos met us, saying "Here is your boy!" At first Ashiraf had no recollection of speaking to us four years earlier; but I showed him a photocopy of his words in his own handwriting, and he looked, and said, "Oh, yes! I remember!" So I called him forward during my speech.
http://youtu.be/pOy5AK2spWQ