This week opened with some good news from Jinja Network. Our membership application has been approved and we will be able to start attending meetings and participating in activities with other organisations who work for vulnerable or marginalised children in Jinja. This opens a whole raft of possibilities for us in terms of link building, partnership working and cementing our place within Jinja’s NGO community.

Unfortunately, this week has been a frustrating one for SALVE and the interns as far as street clinics are concerned. We have been unable to meet as many children as we would like to as the children have moved from their normal gathering places. Unfortunately one child was caught by a stall holder in the bus park attempting to steal some shoes and since then the children have been scared to return there as usual in the morning. This has made it difficult for the team to make contact with them and highlights the chaotic nature of the lives of these children. On a more positive note, we have been able to meet with some older children. Although they are too old to enter the SALVE project, we hope that in building contacts with other organisations through our membership with Jinja Network, we will be able to refer them on to other organisations who can help them.

The community education projects are slowly getting off the ground. We are in the final stages of putting together a proposal for the carpentry project. This will be sent to the UK for approval and hopefully funding will be granted so we can start work with some of the poorest people in Jinja to broaden their skills and employment opportunities. In doing so, we hope to reduce the number of families living in poverty and therefore the number o children forced onto the street.

Junior has successfully completed his first week of school. He has really enjoyed it but is very tired from the 6.30am starts. Its very strange to have him be so quiet at the dinner table! He reports that he’s made some friends and has enjoyed learning English. Topics covered this week include learning how to tell the time and how to describe what he is wearing. We hope all the English we’ve been speaking at home has helped him a bit!

Next week looks to be a buys one. We will start with our first meeting at Jinja network on Monday and hope to put in place the foundations of our tourist education programme. More to follow on that next week.

See you soon,

Emma and Imogen