Our involvement:

In recent decades, the Kumi district in Eastern Uganda has been faced with famine, a brutal civial war, and most deadly of all, the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Mission Direct has worked in Kumi since 2010 alongside the charity Children of Hope and Dignity. We are working to build forty homes for orphans of AIDS and civil war. Each home houses eight to ten children and is tended to by a local widow who acts as ‘house mother’. She provides food, education, healthcare and nurture – giving them back some semblance of family life that they are desperate for. Crucially it gives them hope for the future.

So far Mission Direct teams have helped to build three of these homes, and new communities have moved in to start a new life.

Outcome:

The three houses we have built will enable up to thirty children to live at COHAD, receive education and medical treatment and experience family life.

Our involvement:

Volunteers have also rebuilt five village homes, either brick or mud, alongside the local church development team. The owners of the homes are either too ill (many have HIV) or do not have the money or the strength to repair them and are often without family members who can help them. 

Outcome:

So far five new homes have been built for some of the most needy villagers in the Kumi area. In addition to the house building, we have taken part in a feeding programme to assist the most needy families in the villages in which we have been working.

This clinic is a local facility for the people of Kumi and receives very little in government funding.

Our involvement:

Mission Direct teams have redecorated various parts of Kumi Health Centre including the wards and the outpatients department. We have also emptied, cleaned and repainted the toilets on site and provided medical supplies.

Outcome:

Redecorating Kumi Health Centre is a real witness to the local community. It is a facility in the middle of Kumi and used by many of it’s citizens. By working alongside local people to imprpve the most basic of facilities, we have been able to really show God’s love in action.