School visitation time, and all sorts of updates and news from S.A.L.V.E.

Ugandan update:

This week was time for school visitation time for a lot of our children. This is a chance for our children to show us their schools, for us to get an update from teachers on the children's progress and for the S.A.L.V.E. family to enjoy some good food together :)


Good news is that we are getting a lot of positive reports on our children's progress - and we now have several prefects and class monitors amongst our ranks!

The Salve team has also been working hard to try to find a good (not too expensive) space to rent for our women's group in Mafubira - and the good news is we think we have somewhere now. This will mean a better, cleaner environment for the womens lessons!



We have also been doing a lot of work in our local town of Bugembe and are working alongside the town council there to try to stop the growing number of fulltime childrenliving on the street
in the area.

We have also taken in a lovely new girl called Faith (aged 11) who needed to escape from some members of her family wanting to harm her.


UK update:

Things remain busy as ever in the UK as we try our best to raise awareness about our work in Uganda and continue our big fundraising drive towards getting land and a home of our very own.

We are looking for sponsors for two of our wonderful children - Junior Masolo and Faith. Please do get in contact if you might be interested (£35 a month) = info@salveinternational.org


We've been out talking to the wonderful hitchhikers from Sheffield Rag who will be going all the way to Poland this Easter with us as one of the charities they are supporting (and have already raised money for us from their baby hitchhike last year!). Thank you so much for all you are doing for us!

We are busy preparing for our Spalsh for S.A.L.V.E. in April (a chance to swim part of the Nile here in the UK!) - Events are cropping up in Manchester, London, Sheffield, in some schools and even Brussels! Find out more about swimming or even going one spalsh further and coordinating your local swim!


And we are supporting the wonderful Kathryn Ellis in her London marathon run for S.A.L.V.E. on 17th April!

Do get in touch if you have any other ideas on where we could go to speak about our work or some good fundraising ideas? info@salveinternational.org

And the good news is our online shop will be up and running very soon .... A great idea for mothers day this year!

How to Help?

Nights on the streets in Jinja are a world away from the life we know here in the UK. When Nicola and Helen were first setting up S.A.L.V.E. back in 2008, there is one night that sticks out in their mind more than any other.

After a day spent meeting children on the street, they returned to their lodgings as usual. But whilst their day that had been filled with sunshine and plenty of hope for the future, there followed one of the wildest nights in living memory. A storm of huge proportions hit Jinja. The winds raged, lightening flashed and the thunder deafened. And as the shutters were battered against their bedroom windows, all Nicola and Helen could think of was the children they had left on the streets as they came home that evening.

This is one of the most difficult things about S.A.L.V.E.’s work; that however many children we help along they way, there are always more who we haven’t been able to offer assistance to, often due to circumstances beyond our control. And so, when we are unable to bring a child into our house and onto the S.A.L.V.E. sponsorship scheme, we look for other ways in which we can help them.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will know that one way we do this is through our street clinics where we are able to offer support and counselling to those kids who are still living on the streets of Jinja. But if the circumstances allow it, another crucial aspect of our work is to reunite children with the families thy have left behind. Children take to the streets for a wide variety of reasons, and whilst it is logical to think that they left home because their families no longer want to look after them, this is often a long way from the truth. In fact, many children end up on the streets because they have been searching for family, but don’t know where to start and soon find they have nowhere to go. So whenever we can, we try to bring a child back together with their family. Sometimes this takes a good bit of detective work on our part, whilst at other times this can be very straightforward, as a child will often know where to find their relations but simply doesn’t have the means of getting to them.

This week, S.A.L.V.E.’s Ugandan team were able to help a child in just this way and are currently in the process of restoring a boy called Junior to his family. Junior has been living on the streets for three years now, and desperately wants to be back at home with his elder brother who we are currently searching for. Although this may take a bit of time, we are getting there slowly but surely, having recently traced his grandmother, who hasn’t seen him since he left home. With many other family members to care for, Junior’s grandmother is unable to take him in, but she was overjoyed to see him, and we hope that through her we will soon be able to get Junior back to where he belongs. We'll be sure to keep you posted on any developments in our search for Junior's family, so do come back to see how we get on.

A focus on the Fundraising

In honour of the fact that we are launching our incredible London Fundraising team very soon and are currently recruiting for dedicated volunteers we thought that we'd do a special blog for you all about fundraising.

Now anyone who has been following our work this year must have noticed our rather creative efforts to raise money are ever increasing: we decided as an organisation to start fundraising to buy our own land during our annual general meeting in Uganda earlier this year and so far the support we've had has been tremendous and we've raised over £5000!

This has been raised through a variety of ways: people being sponsored to take on challenges, fundraising events and through people generously donating (either a one off or a regular sum no matter how big or small does make a huge difference to us!).

Two of our most recent fundraising champions Becca and Lucy Fawcett wrote this about their recent running triumph:

Running the BIG half for SALVE

Why SALVE?

After seeing the amazing difference that the S.A.L.V.E. team had already made to street children's lives in Uganda, Luc and Becca wanted to do their bit in support of the great project. Through the sponsorship of Maureen, the Fawcett family has had a glimpse into the day-to-day struggles of the street children in Jinja and the amazing work S.A.L.V.E. does.

S.A.L.V.E's work is particularly pertinent to the girls as the charity was set up and is run by people their own age. It also offers a great opportunity to see 100% of donations go straight where they are desperately needed. As the charity is still small, they can see that every penny raised makes a real difference.

Why the Sheffield half marathon?

As neither sister had ever really run beyond the obligatory (and life-threatening) 1,500 metres at school they decided the Sheffield half marathon would be sufficiently taxing for 2010. For Becca it was a welcome break from the City and for Luc a reminder of what great sights Sheffield has to offer…
The sisters made the decision to run in February, giving themselves about 8 weeks to prepare. At first a grueling 20 minute jog around the block seemed epic, so the prospect of a 13 mile run was inconceivable. The Just Giving page was launched and a target of £500 was set – gradually the sponsorship started to roll in and the project built up momentum.

As the weeks went by a bit of cycling and a few sit-ups were thrown in to the ‘training regimes’ for good measure…in fact Becca and Luc were surprised at how fast they went from loathing to loving the runs. Knowing they had a target to achieve and children to help gave them the extra push to get up on those rainy Sundays to pound the streets of London and Sheffield. The sponsorship monies grew and grew and before long the target was met and even doubled. Alison and Simon Fawcett hosted a “Chili Evening” which was a great (and delicious) success.

Crunch time. The sisters were both feeling nervous as they stood on the track at Don Valley stadium amongst the crowd of very professional looking athletes. The running conditions were looking good: no rain, not too sunny nor too windy - perfect! Even better, another crew of cheery S.A.L.V.E. fundraisers were quickly spotted thanks to the bright yellow T-shirts. The “yellows” shared stories and momentary laughter. However panic quickly followed – if we don’t make it, we won’t have earnt the sponsorship…what then - what about the Jinja kids???

The sisters ran together, both feeling strong for those first six miles; running from Don Valley through the revamped city centre and along the popular Ecclesall Road…mile 11 was the point when they started to get emotional…nearly there! The last lap around the stadium was tough, with people collapsing in the final mile...

The sisters went for “sprint finishes”, Becca finishing in 2hrs 07mins and Luc in 2hrs17mins.

The next day was sore, but absolutely worth it.

THANK YOU S.A.L.V.E. International for motivating us to have such an emotional and exciting experience and giving us such an amazing target.

With generous sponsorship from the DLA Piper Charitable Trust, colleagues, friends and family across the UK, Becca and Lucy raised over £1,500 for S.A.L.V.E.

Do you want to get more involved?

We are always happy to help and support anyone who is interested in fundraising for S.A.L.V.E. and have a fundraising pack full of good ideas to get you on your way: please email caitlin@salveinternational.org for more info!

The Show Must Go On ...

Hmmm what's this? A blog being written from the UK team instead of from Uganda. As you may have noticed we have made a decision as a charity to have a little break from volunteers in Uganda - not permanent we promise! We just felt that a year on from starting the program was a good time to do some serious evaluation and bring the intern program back even better than before later in the year ... so watch this space if you're interested in applying.

Holiday fun

Mike, Assy and Stephen are currently enjoying the school holidays with all the S.A.L.V.E. children. It's great to have a chance to relax and play together. And also for the first time we're getting the children involved with our staff in making their lists of requirements for the new school term, which could be fun ... Will we just be asked for the normal book, pencils and uniform this term? Or will that essential pet elephant that we just haven't considered before get added on?

New Children

Our Ugandan team is also working very hard at the moment with some new boys who we hope will be ready to enter our sponsorship scheme soon. It takes time to build a trusting relationship - but as soon as they are ready we can't wait to welcome them into the S.A.L.V.E. family. If you think that you've got what it takes to become a sponsor - why not get in touch (info@salveinternational.org) and find out more?

UK Fun and Games

And as for us in the UK, we continue to work hard to raise awareness of our work out in Uganda and to raise the vital funds we need. April was an incredible month for us - with our fab London event and amazing army of runners (huge thanks to everyone who got involved!). We are excited to build on that energy as we head towards summer ...

In London we are recruiting for people to join our local fundraising team (caitlin@salveinternational.org) - a couple of hours a week to help us raise that much needed money ... I hear rumours of a ceiliegh coming up so get your dancing shoes ready!

In Manchester John Pegington is getting ready to take on the Edinburgh marathon for us - good luck with your final training!

Meanwhile if you like swimming - do keep the first weekend of September free ... more info coming soon!