Dear Donors, Partners, and our Well-wishers.
Another year has passed, I would like to share St Mugagga Boys Home’s main achievements in 2020. First, I want to express our immense gratitude for the support you have brought to St Mugagga Boys Home to bring better protection to Uganda’s most vulnerable children.
During 2020, St Mugagga Boys Home has continued to develop the rich and the quality of its services for children living outside of parental care (abandoned children, orphans, children victims of abuse, street children). The organization has also launched its website https://stmugagga.org/ and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/stmugagga to enable it to communicate quickly, sensitize the public, and resource mobilization.
GlobalGiving and fundraising
GlobalGiving supports other nonprofits by connecting them to donors, companies, and nonprofits worldwide. GlobalGiving makes it possible for local organizations to access the funding, tools, training, and support they need to become more effective and make the world a better place. What I can confirm to you now is that we are now partners of such a critical Platform! We’re so excited and grateful to partner with GlobalGiving. We came to know about GlobalGiving through Brian Carroll, our partner who is mentoring us in transitioning Children from Residential to Community/Family Care model. Thank you again for making us realize our potentials in fundraising. It was not an easy task to graduate from the GlobalGiving accelerator. Our team used all potentials they had to fundraise $5000 from not less than 40 Donors. It made us realize our networks in and outside Uganda whereby many were sent emails, Facebook messages, Whatsapp messages, and others we went there physically. We addressed our need to them.
I thank all donors who donated generously to our project via the link http://goto.gg/49995.
This project will help St Mugagga Boy’s Home drill a new water well and install a solar-powered pumping system to provide clean water and sanitation for 82 orphans and vulnerable children in our care.
The Impact of COVID19
It is necessary to explain that the achievements highlighted in this report are getting done in an increasingly challenging context. The Global pandemic of the COVID19 lockdown brought Uganda through a severe economic and financial crisis. The country and its population face a massive increase in the prices of essential goods, mainly food. This economic crisis has brought tragic social consequences worsening the situation of the poor in the country. Despite the increasing need for social safety nets and support, the economic situation has also affected St Mugagga fundraising. For this reason, we need to increase our fundraising efforts in 2021 and beyond.
For more on this check out COVID-19 Update: How we’re Protecting Children in Uganda
Our focus on Family-based Care
This difficult economic situation remains a challenge for St Mugagga as to all other Child Care Institutions. However, it also represents another important reason for St Mugagga to accelerate the deinstitutionalization of its programs. The gradual implementation of a family-based placement model will create a situation where long-term shelters will not be needed, thanks to a placement system into the family, extended family, or Kafala (a local form of foster families).
This new model will be beneficial to children’s development and create a more cost-effective model. The current institutional model requires critical staffing, where a family placement model would require lower human resources and running costs.
More than ever, St Mugagga believes that no center, no institution, even the best ones, can replace the care and support brought to a child by a caring family. Thanks to better gatekeeping policies, St Mugagga ensures that children are placed in institutions only as a last resort, after ensuring that all family placement options have been exhausted.
St Mugagga has continued to support local authorities to strengthen the system of selection and support of foster/kafala families to allow more children to grow up within caring families instead of institutions. St Mugagga wants to raise awareness of the Ugandan society’s family-based care in a country and culture where children’s institutions are still perceived positively.
The Orphan Myth Documentary: Why Keeping Families Together Matters
Read our family reunification, kinship care, and family-strengthening stories
The need for child protection in Uganda and social impact
The year 2019 was marked in Uganda by the closure of several orphanages and children institutions by the Ministry of Gender, Labor and Social Development, following child abuse reports in these institutions. The phenomenon of child abuse in children’s institutions is a reality in Uganda and worldwide. Uganda’s authorities are taking these issues more seriously, which comforts St Mugagga in its durable effort of advocacy to implement effective child protection measures within all children institutions.
The systematic training of all St Mugagga staff on Child Protection guidelines and reaction protocols is essential to create an environment where child protection measures are known and practiced by all staff and children and establish a “culture” of Child Protection in the organization.
For more read Let’s care for these children or face their anger in the future
Considering the critical and growing needs of services in child protection in Uganda and given the economic context, St Mugagga is focusing on social impact by providing training and capacity building to child protection actors in Uganda by Catholic Care for Children in Uganda (CCCU). This effort has led St. Mugagga to develop its training/technical support capacity.
Extending St Mugagga direct services is not a sustainable option, especially in the current economic context. Catholic Care for Children in Uganda has provided support, capacity building, and technical expertise to other Child Care providers to contribute to the improvement of child protection services in Uganda, to ultimately reach and benefit indirectly to many children. This objective saw significant progress in 2020, with the preparation of two pilots CCIs of which St Mugagga is part.
We hope 2021 will be a fruitful year, and as we look forward to being in touch with all of you.
Yours sincerely,
Bro Nicholus Nuwagira (BSCL).
St. Mugagga Boys’ Home Jinja
Jinja-Uganda
+256(0)788771908
+256(0)706219395
https://stmugagga.org/
https://www.facebook.com/stmugagga
“The Lord is my Share.”